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JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION. 



THE 

JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION, 

A DISCOURSE 

OBLIVERED AT THE REQ,UKST OP 

TIIE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 

IN THE CITY OP NEW YORK, 

ON TUESDAY, THE 30th OF APRIL 1839 ; 

BEING THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
OF THE 

INAUGURATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON 

AS 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 

ON THURSDAY, THE 30th OF APRIL, 1789. 



Serit arbores, quae alteri seculo prosint — « * quid spectans, nisi etiam postera secula 
a4 Be pertinere 7 Ergo arbores seret diligens agricola, quarum adspiciet baccam ipse nunquam : 
vir magnus leges, instituta, rempublicam non seret "i 

Cicero. Tuso. Quaest. 1. 



i 






- / 

BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 






NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL COLMAN, 

VIII ASTOR HOUSE. 

M DCCC XXXIX. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, 

By JOSEPH BLUNT, 

For the New York Historical Society, 

In the District Court of the Southern District of New York 




THE 



JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

A DISCOURSE. 



When in the epic fable of the first of Roman Poets, 
the Goddess mother of ^Eneas delivers to him the ce- 
lestial armour, with which he is to triumph over his 
enemy, and to lay the foundations of Imperial Rome, 
he is represented as gazing with intense but confused 
delight on the crested helm that vomits golden fires — 

" His hands the fatal sword and corslet hold, 
One keen with tempered steel — one stiff with gold 
He shakes the pointed spear, and longs to try 
The plated cuishes on his manly thigh ; 
But most admires the shield's mysterious mould, 
And Roman triumphs rising on the gold " — 

For on that shield the heavenly smith had wrought the 
anticipated history of Roman glory, from the days of 
iEneas down to the reign of Augustus Caesar, cotempo 
raneous with the Poet himself. 



Fellow-Citizens and Brethren, Associates of 
THE New York Historical Society : — 

Would it be an unlicensed trespass of tlie imagination 
to conceive, that on the night preceding the day of which 
you no w commemorate the fiftieth anniversary— on the 
night preceding that thirtieth of April, one thousand seven 
hundred and eighty-nine, when from the balcony of your 
city-hall, the chancellor of the state of New York, ad- 
ministered to George Washington the solemn oath, faith- 
fully to execute the office of President of the United 
States, and to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect 
and defend the Constitution of the United States — that in 
the visions of the night, the guardian angel of the Father 
of our country had appeared before him, in the venerated 
form of his mother, and, to cheer and encourage him in 
the performance of the momentous and solemn duties 
that he was about to assume, had delivered to him a suit 
of celestial armour — a helmet, consistiDg of the princi- 
ples of piety, of justice, of honour, of benevolence, 
with which from his earliest infancy he had hitherto 
walked through life, in the presence of all his bieth- 
ren — a spear, studded with the self-evident truths of 
the Declaration of Independence-— a sword, the same 
with which he had led the armies of his country 
through the war of freedom, to the summit of the tri- 
umphal arch of independence — a corslet and cuishes 
of long experience and habitual intercourse in peace 
and war with the world of mankind, his cotemporaries 
of the human race, in all their stages of civilization — 
and last of all, the Constitution of the United States, 



a SHIELD embossed bj heavenly hands, with tho 
future history of his country. 

Yes, gentlemen! on that shield, the CONSTITU- 
TION OF THE UNITED STATES was sculp- 
tured,(by forms unseen, and in characters then invisible 
to mortal eye,) the predestined and prophetic history 
of the one confederated people of the North American 
Union. 

They had been the settlers of thirteen separate and 
distinct English colonies, along the margin of the 
shore of the North American continent : contiguously 
situated, but chartered by adventurers of characters 
variously diversified, including sectarians, religious and 
political, of all the classes which for the two preceding 
centuries had agitated and divided the people of the 
British islands — and with them were intermingled 
the descendants of Hollanders, Swedes, Germans, and 
French fugitives from the persecution of the revoker of 
the Edict of Nantes. 

In the bosoms of this people, thus heterogeneously 
composed, there w^as burning, kindled at different fur- 
naces, but all furnaces of affliction, one clear, steady 
flame of LIBERTY. Bold and daring enterprise, 
stubborn endurance of privation, unflinching intrepid- 
! ity in facing danger, and inflexible adherence to con- 
I scientious principle, had steeled to energetic and un- 
! yielding hardihood the characters of the primitive set- 
tlers of all these Colonies. Since that time two or 
three generations of men had passed away — but they 
liad increased and multiplied with unexampled rapid* 



8 

ity ; and the land itself had been the recent theatre oi 
a ferocious and bloody seven years' war between the 
two most powerful and most civilized nations of Eu- 
rope, contending for the possession of this continent. 

Of that strife the victorious combatant had been 
Britain. She had conquered the provinces of France. 
She had expelled her rival totally from the continent 
over which, bounding herself by the Mississippi, she 
was thenceforth to hold divided empire only with 
Spain. She had acquired undisputed control over the 
Indian tribes, still tenanting the forests unexplored by 
the European man. She had established an uncon- 
tested monopoly of the commerce of all her colonies. 
But forgetting all the warnings of preceding ages — for- 
getting the lessons written in the blood of her own 
children, through centuries of departed time, she un- j 
dertook to tax the people of the colonies without their 
consent. 

E-esistance, instantaneous, unconcerted, sympathetic, 
inflexible resistance like an electric shock startled and 
roused the people of all the EngHsh colonies on this 
continent. 

This was the first signal of the North American 
Union. The struggle was for chartered rights — for 
English liberties — for the cause of Algernon Sidney 
and John Hampden — for trial by jury — the Habeas 
Corpus and Magna Charta. 

But the EngHsh lawyers had decided that Parliament 
was omnipotent — and Parhament in their omnipotence, 
instead of trial by jury and the Habeas Corpus, enact- 



9 

ed admiralty courts in England to try Americans for 
offences cliarged against them as committed in Amer- 
ica — instead of the privileges of Magna Charta, nul- 
lified the charter itself of Massachusetts Bay ; shut up 
the port of Boston ; sent armies and navies to keep 
the peace, and teach the colonies that John Hampden 
v^as a rebel, and Algernon Sidney a traitor. 

English liberties had failed them. From the omnip- 
otence of Parliament the colonists appealed to the 
rights of man and the omnipotence of the God of bat- 
tles. Union ! Union ! was the instinctive and simulta- 
neous cry throughout the land. Their Congress, as- 
sembled at Philadelphia, once — twice had petitioned the 
king ; had remonstrated to Parliament ; had addressed 
the people of Britain, for the rights of Englishmen — • 
in vain. Fleets and, armies, the blood of Lexington, 
and the fires of Charlestown and Falmouth, had been 
the answer to petition, remonstrance and address. 

Independence was declared. The colonies were 
transformed into States. Their inhabitants were pro- 
claimed to be one jpeo^le, renouncing all allegiance to 
the British crown ; all co-patriotism with the British 
nation ; all claims to chartered rights as Englishmen. 
Thenceforth their charter was the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. 
Their government, such as should be instituted by 
themselves, under the solemn mutual ^pledges of perpet- 
ual union, founded on the self-evident truths proclaim- 
ed in the Declaration. 

The Declaration of Independence was issued, in the 



10 



excruciating agonies of a civil war, and by that war 
independence was to be maintained. Six long years it 
raged with unabated fury, and the Union was yet no 
more than a mutual pledge of faith, and a mutual par- 
ticipation of common sufferings and common dangers. 

The omnipotence of the British Parliament was van- 
quished. The independence of the United States of 
America, was not granted, but recognised. The na- 
tion had " assumed among the powers af the earth, the 
separate and equal station, to w^hich the laws of na- 
ture, and of nature's God, entitled it" — but the one, 
united people, had yet NO GOVERNMENT. 

In the enthusiasm of their first spontaneous, unstip- 
ulated, unpremeditated union, they had flattered them- 
selves that no general government would be required. 
As separate states they were all agreed that they 
should constitute and govern themselves. The revolu- 
tion under which they were gasping for life, the war 
which was carrying desolation into all their dwellings, 
and mourning into every family, had been kindled by 
the abuse of powder — the power of government. An 
invincible repugnance to the delegation of power, had 
thus been generated, by the very course of events 
w^hich had rendered it necessary ; and the more indis- 
pensable it became, the more awakened was the jeal- 
ousy and the more intense was the distrust by which it 
was to be circumscribed. 

They relaxed their union into a league of friendship 
between sovereign and independent states. They con- 
stituted a Congress, with powers co-extensive with the 



11 

nation, but so hedged and hemmed in with restrictions, 
that the limitation seemed to be the general rule, and 
the grant the occasional exception. The articles of 
confederation, subjected to philosophical analysis, seem 
to be little more than an enumeration of the functions 
of a national government which the congress constitu- 
ted by the instrument was not authorized to perform. 
There was avowedly no executive power. 

The nation fell into an atrophy. The Union lan- 
guished to the point of death. A torpid numbness 
seized upon all its faculties. A chilling cold indiifer- 
ence crept from its extremities to the centre. The sys- 
tem was about to dissolve in its own imbecility — im- 
potence in negotiation abroad — domestic insurrection 
at home, were on the point of bearing to a dishonour- 
able grave the proclamation of a government founded 
on the rights of man, when a convention of delegates 
from eleven of the thirteen states, with George Wash- 
ington at their head, sent forth to the people, an act to 
be made their own, speaking in their name and in the 
first person, thus : " We the people of the United 
States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish 
justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the 
common defence, promote the general welfare, and 
secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our 
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for 
the United States of America." 

This act was the complement to the Declaration of 
Independence ; founded upon the same principles, car- 
rying them out into practical execution, and forming 



12 

with it, one entire system of national government. The 
Declaration was a manifesto to the world of mankind, 
to justify the one confederated people, for the violent 
and voluntary severance of the ties of their allegiance, 
for the renunciation of their country, and for assuming a 
station themselves, among the potentates of the world — 
a self-constituted sovereign — a self-constituted country. 
In the history of the human race this had never been 
done before. Monarchs had been dethroned for tyranny 
— ^kingdoms converted into republics, and revolted prov- 
inces had assumed the attributes of sovereign power. 
In the history of England itself, within one century and 
a half before the day of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, one lawful king had been brought to the block, 
and another expelled, with all his posterity, from his 
own kingdom, and a collateral dynasty had ascended 
his throne. But the former of these revolutions had by 
the deliberate and final sentence of the nation itself, 
been pronounced a rebellion, and the rightful heir of the 
executed king had been restored to the crown. In the 
latter, at the first onset, the royal recreant had fled — he 
was held to have abdicated the crown, and it was placed 
upon the heads of his daughter and of her husband, the 
prime leader of the conspiracy against him. In these 
events there had been much controversy upon the plat- 
form of English liberties — upon the customs of the 
ancient Britons; the laws of Alfred, the Witena- 
gamote of the Anglo-Saxons, and the Great Charter of 
Runnymede with all its numberless confirmations. But 
the actors of those times had never ascended to the first 



13 



foundation of civil society among men, nor had any 
revolutionary system of government been rested upon 
them. 

The motive for the Declaration of Independence was on 
its face avowed to be ''a decent respect for the opinions 
of mankind." Its purpose to declare the causes which 
impelled the people of the English colonies on the conti- 
nent of North America, to separate themselves from the 
political community of the British nation. They declare 
onhj the causes of their separation, but they announce 
at the same time their assumption of the separate and 
equal station to which the laws of nature and of na- 
ture's God entitle them, among the powers of the 
earth. 

Thus their first movement is to recognise and appeal 
to the laws of nature and to nature's God^ for their right 
to assume the attributes of sovereign power as an inde- 
pendent nation. 

The causes of their necessary separation, for they 
begin and end by declaring it necessary, alleged in the 
Declaration, are all founded on the same laws of nature 
and of nature's God — and hence as preliminary to the 
enumeration of the causes of separation, they set forth 
as self-evident truths, the rights of individual man, by the 
laws of nature and of nature's God, to life, to liberty, to 
the pursuit of happiness. That all men are created 
equal. That to secure the rights of life, liberty and the 
pursuits of happiness, governments are instituted among 
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed. All this, is by the laws of nature and of na- 



14 

ture's God, and of course presupposes the existence of 
a God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of 
right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, 
preceding all institutions of human society and of govern- 
ment. It avers, also, that governments are instituted to 
secure these rights of nature and of nature's God, and 
that whenever any form of government becomes destruc- 
tive of those ends, it is the right of THE PEOPLE to 
altCiVor to abolish it, and to institute a new government 
— to throw off a government degenerating into despotism, 
and to provide new guards for their future security. 
They proceed then to say that such was then the situa- 
tion of the Colonies, and such the necessity which con- 
strained them to alter their former systems of govern- 
ment. 

Then follows the enumeration of the acts of tyranny 
by v/hich the king, parliament, and people of Great 
Britain, had perverted the powers to the destruction of 
the ends of government, over the Colonies, and the con- 
sequent necessity constraining the Colonies to the separ- 
ation. 

In conclusion, the Representatives of the United 
States of America, in general Congress assembled, ap 
pealing to the Supreme judge of the world for the rec- 
titude of their intentions, do, in the name and hy the au- 
thority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly pub- 
lish and declare that these United Colonies, are, and of 
right ought to be, free and independent States ; that they 
are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown ; 
and that all political connexion between them and the 



15 

state of Great Britain, is, and ought to be totally dis- 
solved ; and that as free and independent States, they 
have full pov^er to levy war, conclude peace, contract 
alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts 
and things v^hich independent States may of right do. 
The appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world, and the 
rule of right and wrong as paramount events to the 
power of independent States, are here again repeated 
in the very act of constituting a new sovereign com- 
munity. 

It is not immaterial to remark, that the Signers of the 
Declaration, though qualifying themselves as the Rep- 
resentatives of the United States of America, in general 
Congress assembled, yet issue the Declaration, in the 
name and hj the authority of the good people of the Col- 
onies — and that they declare, not each of the separate 
Colonies, but the United Colonies, free and independent 
States. The whole people declared the Colonies m 
their united condition, of RIGHT, free and independent 
States. 

The dissolution of allegiance to the British crown, 

the severance of the Colonies from the British empire, 

and their actual existence as Independent States, thus 

declared of right, were definitively estabhshed in fact, 

by war and peace. The independence of each separate 

I State had never been declared of right. It never existed 

; in fact. Upon the principles of the Declaration ofln- 

I dependence, the dissolution of the ties of allegiance, 

I the assumption of sovereign power, and the institution 

of civil gfovernment, are all acts of transcendant author- 



16 ! 

itj, wliich the people alone are competent to perform — - ' 
and accordinglj, it is in the name and by the authority ' 
of the people, that two of these acts — the dissolution of j 
allegiance, with the severance from the British empire, i 
and the declaration of the United Colonies, as free and 
independent States, were performed by that instru- j 
ment. 1 

But there still remained the last and crowning act, | 
which the People of the Union alone were competent to | 
perform — the institution of civil government, for that 
compound nation, the United States of America. j 

At this day it cannot but strike us as extraordinary, 
that it does not appear to have occurred to any one j 
member of that assembly, which had laid down in terms ' 
so clear, so explicit, so unequivocal, the foundation of 
all just government, in the imprescriptible rights of man, 
and the transcendant sovereignty of the people, and 
who in those principles, had set forth their only per- 
sonal vindication from the charges of rebellion against 
their king, and of treason to their country, that their last 
crowning act was still to be performed upon the same 
principles. That is, the institution, by the people of 
the United States, of a civil government, to guard and 
protect and defend them all. On the contrary, that 
same assembly which issued the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, instead of continuing to act in the name, and 
by the authority of the good people of the United 
States, had immediately after the appointment of the 
committee to prepare the Declaration, appointed another 
committee, of one member from each Colony, to pre- 



17 

pare and digest the form of confederation, to be entered 
into between the Colonies. 

That committee reported on the 12th of July, eight 
days after the Declaration of Independence had been 
issued, a draught of articles of confederation between 
the Colonies, This draught was prepared by John Dick- 
inson, then a delegate from Pennsylvania, who voted 
against the Declaration of Independence, and never 
signed it — having been superseded by a new election 
li delegates from that State, eight days after his 
draught was reported. 

There was thus no congeniality of principle between 
the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of 
Confederation. The foundation of the former were a 
superintending Providence — the rights of man, and the 
constituent revolutionary power of tlie people. That of 
the latter was the sovereignty of organized power, and the 
independence of the separate or dis-united States. The 
fabric of the Declaration and that cf the Confederation, 
were each consistent with its own foundation, but they 
could not form one consistent symmetrical edifice. 
They were the productions of different minds and of 
adverse passions — one, ascending for the foundation of 
human government to the laws of nature and of God, 
written upon the heart of man — the other, resting upon 
the basis of human institutions, and presoriptive law and 
colonial charters. The corner stone of the one was 
right — that of the other wdiS porver. 

The work of the founders of our Independence was 

tlms but half done. Absorbed in that mure than Her 

3 



19 

culean task of maintaining that independence and its 
principles, by one of the most cruel wars that ever 
glutted the furies with human wo, they marched un- 
daunted and steadfast through that fiery ordeal, and 
consistent in their principles to the end, concluded, as 
an acknowledged sovereignty of the United States, pro- 
claimed by their people in 1776, a peace with that same 
monarch, whose sovereignty over them they had abjured 
in obedience to the laws of nature and of nature's God. 

But for these United States, they had formed no 
Constitution. Instead of resorting to the source of all 
constituted power, they had wasted their time, their 
talents, and their persevering, untiring toils, in erecting 
and roofing and buttressing a frail and temporary shed 
to shelter the nation from the storm, or rather a mere 
baseless scaffolding on which to stand, when they should 
raise the marble palace of the people, to stand the test 
of time. 

Five years were consumed by Congress and the 
State Legislatures, in debating and altercating and ad- 
justing these Articles of Confederation. The first of 
which was : — 

" Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and in- 
dependence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, 
which is not by this confederation expressly delegated 
to the United States in Congress assembled." 

Observe the departure from the language, and the 
consequent contrast of principles, with those of the 
Declaration of Independence. 

Each state RETAINS its sovereignty, &c. — where 



19 



did each State get the sovereignty which it retains? 
In the Declaration of Independence, the delegates of 
the Colonies in Congress assembled, in the name and hy 
the authority of the good 'people of the Colonies, declare, 
not «ach Colony, but the United Colonies, in fact, and 
of right, not sovereign, but free and independent States. 
And why did they make this declaration in the name 
and by the authority of the one people of all the Colo- 
nies ? Because by the principles before laid down in 
the Declaration, the people, and the people alone, as the 
rightful source of all legitimate government, were com- 
petent to dissolve the bands of subjection of all the Col- 
onies to the nation of Great Britain, and to constitute 
them free and independent States. Now the people of 
the Colonies, speaking by their delegates in Congress, 
had not declared each Colony a sovereign, free and inde- 
pendent State — nor had the people of each Colony so 
declared the Colony itself, nor could they so declare it, 
because each was already bound in union with all the 
rest; a union formed de facto, by the spontaneous 
revolutionary movement of the whole people, and or- 
ganized by the meeting of the first Congress, in 1774, a 
year and ten months before the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. 

Where, then, did each State get the sovereignty, 
freedom and independence, which the articles of con- 
federation declare it retains ? — not from the whole peo- 
ple of the whole union — not from the Declaration of 
Independence — not from the people of the state itself. 
It was assumed by agreement between the legislatures 



20 



of the several States, and their delegates in Congress, 
without authority from or consultation of the people at all 

In the Declaration of Independence, the enacting and 
constituent party dispensing and delegating sovereign 
power, is the w^hole people of the United Colonies. The 
recipient party, invested with power, is the United Col- 
onies, declared United States. 

In the articles of confederation, this order of agency 
is inverted. Each state is the constituent and enacting 
party, and the United States in Congress assenibled, 
the recipient of delegated power — and that power, del- 
gated with such a penurious and carking hand, that it 
had more the aspect of a revocation of the Declara- 
tion of Independence than an instrument to carry it into 
effect. 

It well deserves the judicious inquiry of an American 
statesman, at this time, how this involuntary and un- 
conscious usurpation upon the rights of the people of 
the United States, originated and was pursued to its 
consummation. 

In July, 1775, soon after the meeting of the second 
revolutionary Congress, and a year before the Declara- 
tion of Independence, Dr. Franklin had submitted to 
their consideration, a sketch of articles of confederation 
between the colonies, to continue until their reconcilia- 
tion wdth Great Britain, and in failure of that event, to 
be perpetual. 

The third article of that project provided " that each 
colony shall enjoy and retain as much as it may think fit^ 
of its own present laws, customs, rights, privileges, and 



21 

peculiar jurisdictions within its own limits ; and may 
amend its own constitution, as shall seem best to its 
own assembly or convention." Here was and could be 
no assertion of sovereignty. 

This plan appears to have been never discussed in 
Congress. But when, on the 7th of June, 1776, the res- 
olution of independence was offered and postponed, 
another resolution was submitted and carried for the 
appointment of a committee of one member from each 
rolony, to prepare and digest a form of a confederation. 

The third article of the draught reported by that 
committee, was in these words : — 

'' Each colony shall retain as much of its present laws, 
rights, and customs, as it may think fit, and reserve to 
itself the sole and exclusive regulation and government 
of its internal police, in all matters that shall not inter- 
fere with the articles of this confederation.''^ 

The first article had declared the name of the confed- 
eracy to be the United States of America. 

By the second, the colonies " unite themselves, so as 
never to be divided by any act whatever," and entered 
into a firm league of friendship with each other. 

From the 12th of July to the 20th of August, 1776, 
the report of the committee was debated almost daily, 
in a committee of the whole house, and they reported 
to Congress a new draught, the first article of which 
retained the name of the confederacy. 

The second left out the warm-hearted Union, so as 
never to be divided by any act whatever, and only 
several!]/ entered into a firm league of friendship for 



22 

special purposes. By the third, " Each state reserves 
to itself the sole and exclusive regulations and govern- 
ment of its internal police in all matters that shall not 
interfere with the Articles of this Confederation.''^ 

The gradual relaxation of the fervid spirit of union 
which had quickened every sentence of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, is apparent in these changes of 
phraseology and omission. 

The articles reported by the committee of the whole 
were laid aside on the 20th of August, 1776, and were 
not resumed till the 7th of April, 1777. 

They were then taken up, and pertinaciously and 
acrimoniously debated two or three times a w^eek till 
the 15th of November, 1777, when they w^ere adopted 
by Congress in a new and revised draught. 

And here the reversal of the fundamental principles 
of the Declaration of Independence was complete, and 
the symptoms of disunion proportionally aggravated. 
The first article instead of the name declared the style 
of the confederacy to be the United States of America. 
Even in this change of a single word, there was the 
spirit of disunion ; a name being appropriately applied 
to the unity, and a style to the plurality of the aggre- 
gate body. 

An alteration still more significant was the inversion 
in the order of the second and third articles. In all 
the former draughts, in the sketch presented by Dr. 
Franklin in 1775, in the draught reported by the select 
committee in July, 1776, and in that reported after full 
debate by the committee of the whole house to Con- 



23 .^. 

gress, on the 20th of August, 1776, the union had been 
constituted in the second article, and the reservation of 
separate rights not interfering rvith the articles of the 
confederation, had been made in the third. 

But now the reservation of separate rights came first 
in order, appeared as the second article, and instead of 
being confined to internal poHce, and all matters that 
shall not interfere v^ith the articles of this confedera- 
tion, was transformed into a direct assertion of sover- 
eignty, not in the people of each state, but in each 
state. And thus it was that each state had acquired 
that sovereignty, which the third article, now made the 
second, declared it retained. It was a power usurped 
upon the people, by the joint agency of the state legis- 
latures and of their delegates in Congress, without any 
authority from the people whatever. And with this 
assertion of sovereignty, each state retained also every 
power, jurisdiction and right, not by the confederation 
expressly delegated to the United States in Congress as- 
sembled. And then came limping on in the third arti- 
cle, degraded from its place as the second, the firm 
league of friendship of these several states with each 
other, for their common defence, the security of their 
liberties, and their mutual and general welfare. 

In the debates upon these articles of confederation, 
between the 7th of October, and the 17th of Novem- 
ber, the conflict of interests and of principles between 
the people of the whole Union, and each of the states, 
was strongly marked. The first question was upon 
the mode of voting in Congress 



24 

It was moved that in determining questions, each 
state should have one vote for every fifty thousand 
white inhabitants. 

That each state should have a right to send one del- 
egate to Congress for every thirty thousand of its in- 
habitants — each delegate to have one vote. 

That the quantum of representation of each state 
should be computed by numbers proportioned to its 
contribution of money or tax laid and paid into the 
public treasury. 

These propositions, all looking to a representation 
proportional to numbers or to taxation, that is, to per- 
sons or property, were all rejected, and it was resolved 
that in determining questions each state should have 
one vote. 

Then came the question of the common charges and 
expenses. The first proposition was that they should 
be proportioned to the number of inhabitants of each 
state. Then to the value of all property, excepting 
household goods and wearing apparel, both of which 
were rejected, and the proposition was fixed according 
to the quantity of land granted and surveyed, with the 
estimated improvements thereon. 

But the great and insurmountable difl&culty, left alto- 
gether unadjusted by these articles of confederation, 
was to ascertain the boundaries of each of these sov- 
ereign states. It was proposed that these boundaries 
should be ascertained by them ; for which purpose the 
state Legislatures should lay before Congress a de- 
scription of the territorial lands of each of their respect- 



25 

ive states, and a summary of the grants, treaties, and 
proofs, upon which they were claimed or estabHshed. 

It was moved that the United States, in Conofress 
assembled, should have the sole and exclusive right 
and power to ascertain and fix the western boundary of 
such states as claimed to the South sea ; and to dis- 
pose of all land beyond the boundary so ascertained, 
for the benefit of the United States. 

And that the United States in Congress assembled, 
should have the sole and exclusive right and power to 
ascertain and fix the western boundary of such states, 
as claimed to the Mississippi or South sea, and to lay 
out the land beyond the boundary so ascertained, into 
separate and independent states, from time to time, as 
the numbers and circumstances of the people might re- 
quire. 

All these propositions were rejected, and the articles 
of confederation were sent forth to the sovereign, free 
and independent states for ratification, without defining 
or ascertaining the limits of any one of them ; while 
some of them claimed to the South sea, and others 
were cramped up within a surface of less than fifteen 
hundred square miles. 

It is further remarkable that in the progress of these 
debates, the institution of an executive council, which 
in all the previous draughts had been proposed, was 
struck out, and instead of it was substituted a helpless 
and imbecile committee of the states, never but once 
attempted to be carried into execution, and then speed- 
ily dissolved in its own weakness. 



26 



Such was the system, elaborated with great, perse- 
vering, and anxious dehberation ; animated with the 
most ardent patriotism; put together with eminent 
ability and untiring industry, but vitiated by a defect 
in the general principle —in the departure from the self- 
evident truths of the Declaration of Independence ; the 
natural rights of man, and the exclusive, sovereign, 
constituent right of the people. 

The result corresponded with this elementary error. 
The plan of confederacy was sent forth to the state 
Legislatures with an eloquent and pathetic letter, 
pointing out the difficulties and delays which had at- 
tended its formation, urging them candidly to review 
the difficulty of combining in one general system the 
various sentiments and interests of a continent divided 
into so many sovereign and independent communities. 
Assuring them that the plan proposed was the best 
which could be adapted to the circumstances of all, 
and that alone which affiDrded any tolerable prospect 
of general ratification ; and urging its immediate adop- 
tion in the following deeply affecting and impressive 
admonition : — 

"We have reason to regret the time which has elapsed 
in preparing this plan for consideration. With addi- 
tional solicitude ve look forward to that which must 
be necessarily speat before it can be ratified. Every 
motive loudly call;; upon us to hasten its conclusion 

''More than any other consideration, itw^ll confound 
our foreign enemies, defeat the flagitious practices cf 
the disaffected, strengthen and confirm our friends, sup 



27 

port our public credit, restore the value of our money, 
enable us to maintain our fleets and armies, and add 
weight and respect to our councils at home, and to 
our treaties abroad. 

"In short, this salutary measure can no longer be 
deferred. It seems essential to our very existence as 
a free people ; and without it we may soon be con- 
strained to bid adieu to independence, to liberty and 
safety — blessings which from the justice of our cause, 
and the favour of our Almighty Creator, visibly mani- 
fested in our protection, we have reason to expect, if 
in an humble dependence on his divine providence, we 
strenuously exert the means which are placed in our 
power." * 

In this solemn, urgent, and emphatic manner, and 
with these flattering and sanguine anticipations of the 
blessings to be showered upon their country by this 
cumbrous and complicated confederacy of sovereign 
and independent states, was this instrument transmitted 
to the state Legislatures ; and so anxious were the 
framers of it for the sanction of the states at the ear- 
liest possible moment, that it was recommended to the 
executive of each of the states to whom it was ad- 
dressed, if the Legislature was pot assembled at the 
time of its reception, to convene them without delay. 

Not such however was the disposition of the several 
state Legislatures. Bach of them was governed as it 
naturally and necessarily must be by the interests and 
opinions predominating within the state itself Not 
one of them was satisfied with the articles as they had 



28 

been prepared in Congress. Every state Legislature 
found something objectionable in them. They com- 
bined the enormous inconsistency of an equal repre- 
sentation in Congress of states most unequal in extent 
and population, and an imposition of all charges, and 
expenses of the whole, proportioned to the extent and 
value of the settled and cultivated lands in each, A 
still more vital defect of the instrument vras that it left 
the questions of the limits of the several states and in 
v^hom was the property of the unsettled crown -lands, 
not only unadjusted, but wholly unnoticed. 

The form of ratification proposed by Congress, was 
that each of the state Legislatures should authorize 
their delegates in Congress to subscribe the Articles ; 
and in their impatience for a speedy conclusion, two 
motions were made to recommend that the states should 
enjoin upon their delegates invested with this author- 
ity, to attend Congress for that purpose, on or before 
the then ensuing first of May or tenth of March. 

These however did not prevail. This extreme 
anxiety for the prompt and decisive action of the 
states, upon this organization of the confederacy, was 
the result of that same ardent and confiding patriotism 
so unforeseeing, and yet so sincere, which could flatter 
iteelf with the belief that this nerveless and rickety 
league of friendship between sovereign, independent, 
disunited states, could confound the foreign enemies of 
the Union, defeat the practices of the disaffected, sup- 
port the credit of the country, restore the value of 
their depreciating money, enable them to maintain 



29 

fleets and armies, and add weight and respect to their 
counsels at home, and to their treaties abroad. 

This fervid patriotism, and all these glowing antici- 
pations were doomed to total disappointment. Seven 
months passed away, and on the 22d of June, 1778, 
Congress proceeded to consider the objections of the 
states to the articles of confederation. Those of 
Maryland were first discussed and rejected. Those of 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, fol- 
lowed, and all shared the same fate. No objections 
were presented by New Hampshire or Virginia. Del- 
aware and North Carolina had no representation then 
present, and Georgia only one member in attendance. 

On the 9th of July, 1778, the Articles were signed by 
the delegates of New Hampshire, Massachusetts bay, 
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, 
Virginia and South Carolina. 

The delegates from New Jersey, Delav/are and 
Maryland, informed Congress that they had not yet re- 
ceived powers to ratify and sign. North Carolina and 
Georgia were not represented — and the ratification of 
New York was conditional that all the other states 
should ratify. 

The delegates from North Carolina signed the Arti- 
cles on the 21st of July, 1778. Those of Georgia on 
the 24th of the same month. Those of New Jersey 
on the 26th of November, 1778. Those of Delaware 
on the 22d of February, and 5th of May, 1779— but 
Maryland held out to the last, and positively refused 



30 

the ritification, until the question of the conflicting^ 
claims of the Union, and of the separate states to the 
property of the crown-lands should be adjusted. This 
was finally accomplished by cessions from the claiming 
states to the United States, of the unsettled lands, for 
the benefit of the whole Union. 

Is it not strange again that it appears not to have 
been perceived by any one at that time that the whole 
of this controversy arose out of a departure from the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the 
substitution of state sovereignty instead of the constit- 
uent sovereignty of the people, as the foundation 
of the Revolution and of the Union. The war from the 
beginning had been, and yet was, a revolutionary pop- 
ular war. The colonial governments never had pos- 
sessed or pretended to claim sovereign power. Many 
of them had not even yet constituted themselves as in- 
dependent States. The Declaration of Independence 
proclaims the natural rights of man, and the constituent 
power of the people to be the anly sources of legitimate 
government. State sovereignty is a mere argument of 
power, without regard to right — a mere reproduction of 
the omnipotence of the British parliament in another 
form, and therefore not only inconsistent with, but direct- 
ly in opposition to, the principles of the Declaration of 
Independence. 

The cessions of the claiming states of the crown lands 
to the Union, originated the territorial system, and eventu- 
ated in the ordinance for the government of the North 
Western Territory. It also removed the insuperable ob- 



31 



jection of the State of Maryland to the articles of con- 
federation, and her delegates signed them on the 1st of 
March, 1781, four years and four months after they had 
been submitted by Congress to the sovereign states, 
with a solemn averment that they could no longer be 
deferred ; that they seemed essential to the very ex- 
istence of the Union as a free people ; and that with- 
out them they might be constrained to bid adieu to 
independence, to liberty, and safety. 

But the dispute relating to the jurisdiction and prop- 
erty of the crown lands, was only one of a multitude of 
stumbling blocks which were perpetually crossing the 
path of the new nation, in the collisions between the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence and the 
sovereignty of the separate states. In the adjustment of 
that, both the systems were substantially set aside. For 
the claiming states, by the cessions themselves, aban- 
doned their pretensions, so far as that interest was con- 
cerned, to the rights of independent state sovereignty, 
and the Congress of the confederation by an enactment 
of the ordinance for the government of the North West- 
ern Territory, assumed an authority which had not been 
delegated to them, either by the constituent sovereign 
people, or by the separate sovereign states. 

The articles of confederation had withheld from Con- 
gress, the power of regulating the commerce of the 
Union, and of levying money by taxation upon the peo- 
ple ; yet they were authorized to make war and con- 
clude peace — to contract debts and bind the nation by 
treaties of commerce. The war was raging in its 



32 

most inveterate fury, and to defray its indispensable 
charges and expenses, the only power of Congress was 
to issue requisitions to the states, which their sovereign 
power complied with, or disregarded,' or rejected, ac* 
cording to their sovereign will and pleasure. 

So seldom had this been to furnish the required sup- 
plies, that even before the first ratification of the articles 
of confederation, on the 3d of February, 1781, it had 
been resolved that it be recommended to the several 
states, as indispensably necessary, that they vest a pow 
er in Congress, to levy for the use of the United States, 
a duty of five per cent, ad valorem, at the time and 
place of importation, upon all foreign goods, wares, and 
merchandise of foreign growth and manufactures, im- 
ported after the 1st of May, 1781 ; also a like duty upon 
all prize-goods, to be appropriated to the discharge of the 
principal and interest of the debts contracted on the 
faith of the United States, for the support of the war. 

Indispensably necessary ! But according to the prin- 
ciples of the Declaration of Independence, the state 
legislatures themselves had no authority to confer this 
power upon Congress. It was taxation — one of the 
powers which the people alone are competent to bestow, 
and which their servants, the state legislatures, if they 
possessed it themselves, had no right to delegate to 
any other body. 

Upon the principles of state sovereignty — power 
without right, this authority might have been conferred 
upon Congress by the state legislatures, and several of 
them did enact laws for bestowing it. But by the arti- 



33 

cles of confederation, no alteration of them could be ef- 
fected without the consent of all the states, and Rhode 
Island, the smallest state in the Union, inflexibly held 
out in the refusal to grant the indispensably necessary 
power. Virginia granted and soon repealed it. Con- 
gress issued bills of credit as long as they had any 
credit ; but all the states did the same till their bottom- 
less paper depreciated to a thousand for one, and then 
vanished by a universal refusal to receive it. Congress 
issued four successive requisitions upon the states, for 
their respective quotas to pay the debts and current ex- 
penses of the Union. Not one of the states paid one 
half the amount of its contribution. Congress bor- 
rowed money in France, in Spain, in Holland, and 
obtained it there when they could not raise a dollar 
at home, and they were compelled to resort to new 
loans to pay the interest upon those that had pre- 
ceded. 

Under the pressure of all these distresses, the cause 
of independence was triumphant. Peace came. The 
United States of America were recognised as free and 
independent, and as one People took the station to which 
the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them 
among the powers of the earth. But their confederacy 
of sovereign states was as incompetent to govern them 
in peace as it had been to conduct them in war. The 
first popular impulse to union had carried them through 
the war. As that popular impulse died away, the 
confederation had supplied its place with hope and 
promise, the total disappointment of which, though dis- 



34 

covered before the peace, was providentiallj^ not per- 
mitted to prevent its conclusion. 

Peace came. The heroic leader of the revolutionary 
armies surrendered his commission. The armies were 
disbanded, but they were not paid. Mutiny was sup- 
pressed ; but not until Congress had been surrounded 
by armed men, demanding justice, and appealed in 
vain for protection to the sovereign state within whose 
jurisdiction they were sitting. A single frigate, the 
remnant of a gallant navy, which had richly shared the 
glories, and deeply suffered the calamities of the war, 
was dismantled and sold. The expenses of the nation 
were reduced to the minimum of a peace establishment, 
and yet the nation was not relieved. The nation wanted 
a government founded on the principles of the Declar- 
ation of Independence — a government constituted 
by the people. 

The commerce, navigation, and fisheries of the na- 
tion, had been annihilated by the war. But as a civil- 
ized nation cannot exist without commerce, an ilhcit 
trade with the enemy had sprung up towards the close 
of the war, highly injurious to the common cause, 
but which Congress had not the power to suppress. 
The same causes had given rise to another practice not 
less pernicious and immoral, by which privateersmen 
ransomed the prizes captured from the enemy at sea — 
that is, by releasing the captured vessel for a contribu- 
tion taken in bills upon the owner of the prize, which 
were punctually paid, thereby converting the trade of 
the privateer into a species of gambling piracy. 



35 

These practices ceased with the peace. But the com- 
merce of the United States, for want of a regulating pow- 
er, was left at the mercy of foreign and rival traders. 
Britain immediately took advantage of this weakness, 
declined entering into any commercial treaty with us, 
which Congress had proposed, and brought to bear upon 
the American trade all the weight of her navigation 
laws. Massachusetts and Virginia made the experi- 
ment of counteracting laws, the only effect of which 
was to exclude a little remnant of their trade from their 
own ports, and to transfer it to the ports of neighbouring 
states. 

On the 18th of April, 1783, Congress renewed the 
demand upon the states, for authority to levy an im- 
post duty, specific on sundry articles of importation, 
and five per cent, ad valorem on others, to raise not quite 
one million of dollars, or about two fifths of the annual 
interest accruing upon the pubhc debt; and that the 
states should themselves establish some system for 
supplying the public treasury with funds, for the punc- 
tual payment of the other three fifths of the annual in- 
terest ; and also, for an alteration in the articles of con- 
federation, changing the proportional rule of contribu- 
tion of the states, from the surface of settled land to the 
numbers of population. 

And on the 30th of April, 1784, Congress recom- 
mended to the state legislatures to vest the United 
States in Congress assembled, for the term of fifteen 
years, with powers to prohibit importations of merchan 
dise in foreign vessels of nations with whom the United 



States had no treaties of commerce, and to prohibit for- 
eigners, unless authorized by treaty, from importing into 
the United States, merchandise, other than the produce 
or manufacture of their own country. In other words, 
to enact a navigation law. 

None of these indispensably necessary powers were 
ever conferred by the state legislatures upon the Con- 
gress of the confederation ; and well was it that they 
never were. The system itself was radically defective. 
Its incurable disease was an apostacy from the principles 
of the Declaration of Independence. A substitution of 
separate state sovereignties, in the place of the constit- 
uent sovereignty of the people, as the basis of the con- 
federate Union. 

But in this Congress of the confederation, the master 
minds of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, 
were constantly engaged through the closing years of 
the Revolutionary War, and those of peace which im- 
mediately succeeded. That of John Jay was associa- 
ted with them shortly after the peace, in the capacity 
of Secretary to the Congress for Foreign Affairs. The 
incompetency of the articles of confederation for the 
management of the affairs of the Union at home and 
abroad, was demonstrated to them by the painful and 
mortifying experience of every day. AVashington, 
though in retirement, was brooding over the cruel in- 
justice suffered by his associates in arms, the warriors 
of the Revolution ; over the prostration of the public 
credit and the faith of the nation, in the neglect to pro- 
vide for the payment even of the interest upon the pub 



37 

lie debt ; over the disappointed hopes of the friends 
of freedom ; in the language of the address from Con- 
gress to the States of the" 18th of April, 1783 — 'Hhe 
pride and boast of America, that the rights for which 
she contended were the rights of human nature." 

At his residence of Mount Vernon, in March, 1785, 
he Arst idea was started of a revisal of the articles of 
onfederation, by an organization of means differing 
fioin that of a compact between the state Legislatures 
and their own delegates in Congress. A convention of 
delegate."^ from the state Legislatures, independent of 
the Con^; ress itself, was the expedient which presented 
itself for effecting the purpose, and an augmentation of 
the powers of Congress for the regulation of com- 
merce, as the object for which this assembly was to be 
convened. In January, 1786, the proposal was made 
and adopted in the Legislature of Virginia, and com- 
municated to the other state Legislatures. 

The Convention was held at Annapolis, in Septem- 
ber of that year. It was attended by delegates from 
only five of the central states, who on comparing their 
restricted powers, with the glaring and universally ac- 
knowledged defects of the confederation, reported only 
a recommendation for the assemblage of another con- 
vention of delegates to meet at Philadelphia, in May, 
1787, from all the states and with enlarged powers. 
^^ The Constitution of the United States was the work 
of this Convention, But in its construction the Con- 
vention immediately perceived that they must retrace 
their steps., and fall back from a league of friendship 



38 



between sovereign states, to the constituent sovereign- 
ty of the people ; from power to right— fxom the irre- 
sponsible despotism of state sovereignty, to the self- 
evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. In 
that instrument, the right to institute and to alter gov- 
ernments among men was ascribed exclusively to the 
people — the ends of government were declared to be 
to secure the natural rights of man ; and that rvhen the 
government degenerates from the promotion to the 
destruction of that end, the right and the duty accrues 
to the people, to dissolve this degenerate government 
and to institute another. The Signers of the Declara- 
tion further averred, that the one people of the United 
Colonies were then precisely in that situation — with a 
government degenerated into tyranny, and called upon 
by the laws of nature and of nature's God, to dissolve 
that government and to institute another. Then in the 
name and by the authority of the good people of the 
Colonies, they pronounced the dissolution of their al- 
legiance to the king, and their eternal separation from 
the nation of Great Britain — and declared the United 
Colonies independent States. And here as the repre- 
sentatives of the one people they had stopped. They 
did not require the confirmation of this Act, for the 
power to make the Declaration had already been con- 
ferred upon them by the people ; delegating the power, 
indeed, separately in the separate colonies, not by colo- 
nial authority, but by the spontaneous revolutionary 
movement of the people in them all. 

From the day of that Declaration, the constituent 



39 

power of the people had never been called into action. 
A confederacy had been substituted in the place of a 
government; and state sovereignty had usurped the 
constituent sovereignty of the people. 

The Convention assembled at Philadelphia had 
themselves no direct authority from the people. Their 
authority was all derived from the state legislatures. 
But they had the articles of confederation before them, 
and they saw and felt the wretched condition into 
which they had brought the whole people, and that the 
Union itself was in the agonies of death. They soon 
perceived that the indispensably needed powers were 
such as no state government ; no combination of them 
was by the principles of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence competent to bestow. They could emanate only 
from the people. A highly respectable portion of the 
assembly, still chnging to the confederacy of states, 
proposed as a substitute for the Constitution, a mere 
revival of the articles of confederation, with a grant 
of additional powers to the Congress. Their plan was 
respectfully and thoroughly discussed, but the want of 
a government and of the sanction of the people to the 
delegation of powers, happily prevailed. A Constitu- 
tion for the people, and the distribution of legislative, 
executive, and judicial powers, was prepared. It an- 
nounced itself as the work of the people themselves ; 
and as this was unquestionably a power assumed by 
the Convention, not delegated to them by the people, 
they religiously confined it to a simple power to pro- 
pose, and carefully provided that it should be no more 



40 

than a proposal until sanctioned by the confederation 
Congress, by the state Legislatures, and by the people 
of the several states, in conventions specially assem- 
bled, by authority of their Legislatures, for the single 
purpose of examining and passing upon it. 

And thus was consummated the work, commenced 
by the Declaration of Independence. A work in which 
the people of the North American Union, acting under 
the deepest sense of responsibility to the Supreme Ruler 
of the universe, had achieved the most transcendent act 
of power, that social man in his mortal condition can 
perform. Even that of dissolving the ties of allegiance 
which he is bound to his country — of renouncing that 
country itself — of demolishing its government, of insti- 
tuting another government, and of making for himself 
another country in its stead. 

And on that day, of which you now commemorate 
the fiftieth anniversary — on that 30th day of April, one 
thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, was this 
mighty revolution, not only in the affairs of our own 
country, but in the principles of government over civ- 
ihzed man, accomplished. 

The revolution itself was a work of thirteen years — 
and had never been completed until that day. The 
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the 
United States, are parts of one consistent whole, founded 
upon one and the same theory of government, 
then new, not as a theory, for it had been working 
itself into the mind of man for many ages, and been 
especially expounded in the writings of Locke, but 



41 

had never before been adopted by a great nation in 
practice. 

There are yet, even at this day, many speculative ob 
jections to this theory. Even in our own country, there 
are still philosophers who deny the principles asserted 
in the Declaration, as self-evident truths — who deny 
the natural equality and inalienable rights of man — ■ 
who deny that the people are the only legitimate source 
of power — who deny that all just powers of govern- 
ment are derived from the consent of the governed. 
Neither your time, nor perhaps the cheerful nature of this 
occasion, permit me here to enter upon the examination 
of this anti-revolutionary theory, which arrays state 
sovereignty against the constituent sovereignty of the 
people, and distorts the Constitution of the United 
States into a league of friendship between confederate 
corporations. I speak to matters of fact. There is the 
Declaration of Independence, and there is the Constitu- 
tion of the United States — let them speak for them- 
selves. The grossly immoral and dishonest doctrine of 
despotic state sovereignty, the exclusive judge of its 
own obligations, and responsible to no power on earth 
or in heaven, for the violation of them, is not there. 
The Declaration says it is not in me. The Constitution 
! says it is not in me. 

\ The confederacy of sovereign states has made itself 
i known by its fruits ; but there is one observation so 
I creditable to our revolutionary fathers, that it ought 
I never to be overlooked. The defects of the confedera- 
cy were vices of the institution, and not of the men by 

6 



42 

whom it was administered. The jealousy of delegated 
power pervaded every part of the articles of confeder- 
acy, and indeed, almost all the separate constitutions. 
The prevailing principle of every provision made under 
the influence of this distrusting maxim, was that the 
same power should not long be intrusted to the same 
hands — but it never extended to the exclusion of any 
person from office, after a designate term of service in 
another. One of the articles of confederation had in- 
terdicted every person from holding the office of a mem- 
ber of Congress more than three years in six. But any 
member excluded by the expiration of his limited term 
of service in Congress, was eligible to any other station 
in the legislative, executive, or judicial departments ol 
his state, or to any office, civil or mihtary, within the 
general jurisdiction of Congress. 

In point of fact, the great measures by which the 
revolution was commenced, conducted, and concluded, 
were devised and prosecuted by a very few leading 
minds, animated by one pervading, predominating spirit. 
The object of the Revolution was the transformation of 
thirteen dependant and oppressed English colonies, into 
one nation of thirteen confederated states. It was as 
the late Mr. Madison remarked to Miss Martineau, an 
undertaking to do that which had always before been 
believed impossible. In the progress to its accomplish- 
ment, obstacles almost numberless, and difficulties appa- 
rently insurmountable, obstructed every step of the way. 
That in the dissolution and re-institution of the social 
compact, by men marching over an untrodden path to 



43 

the very fountains of human government, great and 
dangerous errors should have been committed, is but an 
acknowledgment that the builders of the new edifice 
were fallible men. But at the head of the convention 
that- formed the Constitution, was George Washington, 
the leader of the armies of the Revolution — among its 
prominent members were Benjamin Franklin and Roger 
Sherman, two of the members of that memorable 
committee who had reported the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence — and its other members without exception, 
were statesmen who had served in the councils of the 
Union, throughout the Revolutionary struggle, or war- 
riors who had contended with the enemy upon the 
field. 

The Signers of the Declaration of Independence 
themselves, w^ere the persons who had first fallen into 
the error of believing that a confederacy of indepen- 
dent states would serve as a substitute for the repudi- 
ated government of Great Britain. Experience had 
demonstrated their mistake, and the condition of the 
country was a shriek of terror at its awful magnitude. 
They did retrace their steps — not to extinguish the 
federative feature in which their union had been form- 
ed : nothing could be wider from their intention — but 
to restore the order of things conformably to the prin- 
ciples of the Declaration of Independence, and as they 
had been arranged in the first plans for a confederation. 
To make the people of the Union the constituent body, 
and the reservation of the rights of the states subordi- 
nate to the Constitution. Hence the delegation of 



V 



44 



power was not from each state retaining it sovereignty, 
and all rights not expressly delegated by the states, 
but from the people of each and of all the states, to 
the United States in Congress assembled, represent- 
ing at once the whole people and all the states of the 
Union. 

They retained the federative feature pre-eminently 
in the constitution of the Senate, and in the complica- 
tion of its great powers, legislative, executive, and ju- 
dicial — making that body a participant in all the great 
departments of constituted power. They preserved 
the federative principle and combined it with the con- 
stituent power of the people in the mode of electing 
the President of the United States, whether by the 
electoral colleges, or by the House of Representatives 
voting by states. They preserved it even in the con- 
stitution of the House, the popular branch of the 
Legislature, by giving separate delegations to the peo- 
ple of each state. But they expressly made the Con- 
stitution and constitutional law^s of the United States 
paramount not only to the laws, but to the constitutions 
of the separate states inconsistent with them. 

I have traced step by step, in minute and tedious de- 
tail, the departure from the principles of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, in the process of organizing the 
confederation — the disastrous and lamentable conse- 
quences of that departure, and the admirable temper 
and spirit, with which the Convention at Philadelphia 
returned to those principles in the preparation and 
.composition of the Constitution of the United States. 



45 

i'hat this work was still imperfect, candour will compel 
us all to admit, though in specifying its imperfections, 
the purest minds and the most patriotic hearts differ 
widely from each other in their conclusions. Distrust- 
ful as it becomes me to be of my own judgment, but 
authorized by the experience of a full half century, 
during which I have been variously and almost unin- 
terruptedly engaged in both branches of the Legisla- 
ture, and in the executive departments of this govern- 
ment, and released, by my own rapid approach to the 
closing scene of life, from all possible influence of per- 
sonal interest or ambition, I may perhaps be permitted 
to remark, that the omission of a clear and explicit 
Declaration of Rights, was a great defect in the Con- 
stitution as presented by the Convention to the people, 
and that it has been imperfectly remedied by the ten 
Articles of amendment proposed by the first Congress 
under the Constitution, and now incorporated with it. 
A Declaration of Rights would have marked in a more 
emphatic manner the return from the derivative sover- 
eignty of the states, to the constituent sovereignty of 
the people for the basis of the federal Union, than was 
done by the words, " We the people of the United 
States," in the preamble to the Constitution. A Decla- 
ration of Rights, also, systematically drawn up, as a 
part of the Constitution, and adapted to it with the 
consummate skill displayed in the consistent adjust- 
ment of its mighty powers, would have made it more 
complete in its unity, and in its symmetry, than it now 
appears, an elegant edifice, but encumbered with 



46 

superadditions, not always in keeping witli the general 
character of the building itself. 

A Declaration of Rights, reseri^ed by the constituent 
body, the people, might and probably would have pre- 
vented many delicate and dangerous questions of con- 
flicting jurisdictions which have arisen, and may yet 
arise between the general and the separate state gov- 
ernments. The rights reserved by the people would 
have been exclusively their own rights, and they would 
have been protected from the encroachments not only 
of the general government, but of the disunited states. 

And this is the day of your commemoration. The 
day when the Revolution of Independence being com- 
pleted, and the new confederated Republic announced 
to the world, as the United States of America, consti- 
tuted and organized under a government founded on 
the principles of the Declaration of Independence, was 
to hold her course along the lapse of time among the 
civilized potentates of the earth. 

From this point of departure we have looked back 
to the origin of the Union ; to the conflict of war by 
which the severance from the mother-country, and the 
release from the thraldom of a trans- Atlantic monarch, 
were effected, and to the more arduous and gradual 
progression by which the new government had been 
constructed to take the place of that which had been 
cast off" and demolished. 

The first object of the people, declared by the Con- 
stitution as their motive for its estabhshment, to form a 
more ferfect Union, had been attained by the establish- 



47 

ment of the Constitution itself; but this was yet to be 
demonstrated by its practical operation in the establish- 
ment of justice, in the ensurance of domestic tranquility, 
in the provison for the common defence, in the promo- 
tion of the general welfare, and in securing the bles- 
sings of liberty to the people themselves, the authors of 
the Constitution, and to their posterity. 

These are the great and transcendantal objects of all 
legitimate government. The primary purposes of all 
human association. For these purposes the confedera- 
tion had been instituted, and had signally failed for 
their attainment. How far have they been attained 
under this new national organization ? 

It has abided the trial of time. This day fifty years 
have passed away since the first impulse was given to the 
wheels of this political machine. The generation by 
which it was constructed, has passed away. Not one 
member of the Convention who gave this Constitution to 
their country, survives. They have enjoyed its blessings 
so far as they were secured by their labours. They have 
been gathered to their fathers. That posterity for whom 
they toiled, not less anxiously than for themselves, has 
arisen to occupy their places, and is rapidly passing 
away in its turn. A third generation, unborn upon 
the day which you commemorate, forms a vast majority 
of the assembly who now honour me with their attention. 
Your city which then numbered scarcely thirty thousand 
inhabitants, now counts its numbers by hundreds of 
thousands. Your state, then numbering less than double 
the population of your city at this day, now tells its 



48 

cliildren by millions. The thirteen primitive states 
of the revolution, painfully rallied by this constitution 
to the fold from which the impotence and dis-uniting 
character of the confederacy, was already leading them 
astray, now reinforced by an equal number of younger 
sisters, and all swarming with an active, indnstrions, 
and hardy population, have penetrated from the Atlantic 
to the Rocky Mountains, and opened a paradise upon 
the wilds watered by the father of the floods. The 
Union, which at the first census, ordained by this 
Constitution, returned a people of less than four millions 
of souls; at the next census, already commanded by 
law, the semi-centural enumeration since that day, is 
about to exhibit a return of seventeen milhons. Never 
since the first assemblage of men in social union, has 
there been such a scene of continued prosperity re 
corded upon the annals of time. 

How much of this prosperity is justly attributable to 
the Constitution, then first put upon its trial, may per- 
haps be differently estimated by speculative minds 
Never was a form of government so obstinately, so perti- 
naciously contested before its establishment — and never 
was human foresight and sagacity more disconcerted and 
refuted by the event, than those of the opposers of the 
Constitution. On the other hand its results have sur- 
passed the most sanguine anticipations of its friends. 
Neither Washington, nor Madison, nor Hamilton, dared 
to hope that this new experiment of government would 
so triumphantly accomplish the purposes which the con- 
federation had so utterly failed to effect. Washington — 



49 

far from anticipating the palm of glory which his admin- 
istration of this government was to entwine around his 
brow, transcending the laurel of his then unrivalled mil- 
itary renown, in the interval between the 4th of March, 
when the meeting of the first Congress had been sum- 
moned, and the 14th of April, when he received from 
them the notification of his election as President of the 
United States, thus unbosomed to his friend Knox the 
forebodings of his anxious and agitated mind. " I feel,'^ 
wrote he, '* for those members of the new Congress, 
who hitherto have given an unavailing attendance at 
the theatre of action. For myself, the delay may be 
compared to a reprieve ; for in confidence I tell yoUj 
(with the world it would obtain little credit,) that my 
movements to the chair of government will be accom- 
panied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is 
going to the place of his execution. So unwilling am 
I, in the evening of Hfe, nearly consumed in public cares, 
to quit a peaceful abode for an ocean of difficulties, 
without that competency of political skill, abihties, and 
inclination, which are necessary to manage the helm. 
I am sensible that I am embarking the voice of the peo- 
ple and a good name of my own, on this voyage, but 
what returns can be made of them. Heaven alone can 
foretell. Integrity and firmness are all I can promise : 
these, be the voyage long or short, shall never forsake 
me, although I may be deserted by all men : for of the 
consolations which are to be derived from them, under 
any circumstances, the world cannot deprive me." 

One of the most indubitable tests of the merit of hu- 

7 



50 

man institutions for tlie government of men, is the length 
of time which they endure ; but so fluctuating is the 
character of nations and of ages, as well as of individ- 
uals, that in the history of mankind before our own age, 
this durability of human governments has been exclu- 
sively confined to those founded upon conquests and 
hereditary power. In summing up the character of Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, the Scottish historian, Hume, re- 
marks, that " though he rendered himself infinitely odi- 
ous to his English subjects, he transmitted his power to 
his posterity, and the throne is still filled by his descend- 
ants ; a proof," says the historian, '' that the foundations 
which he laid, were firm and solid, and that amidst all 
his violence, while he seemed only to gratify the present 
passion, he had still an eye towards futurity." 

The descendant from William the Conqueror, who 
filled the throne of Britain when the Scottish historian 
made this remark, was the person whom his American 
subjects, to whom he had rendered himself odious, unseat- 
ed from that portion of his throne which ruled over them ; 
and in discarding him they had demolished the throne 
itself for ever. They had resolved for themselves and 
their posterity, never again to be ruled by thrones. The 
Declaration of Independence had promulgated principles 
of government, subversive of all unlimited sovereignty ^ 
and all hereditary power. Principles, in consistency with 
which no conqueror could establish by violence a throne 
to be trodden by himself and by his posterity, for a space 
of eight hundred years. The foundations of government 
laid by those who had burnt by fire and scattered to the 



51 

winds of Heaven, the ashes of this conqueror's throne, 
were human rights, responsibility to God, and the 
consent of the people. Upon these principles, the Con- 
stitution of the United States had been formed, was now 
organized, and about to be carried into execution, to 
abide the test of time. The first element of its longev- 
ity was undoubtedly to be found in itself — but we 
may, without superstition or fanaticism, believe that a 
superintending Providence had adapted to the charac- 
ter and principles of this institution, those of the man by 
whom it was to be first administered. To fill a throne v/as 
neither his ambition nor his vocation. He had no de- 
scendants to whom a throne could have been transmitted, 
had it existed. He was placed by the unanimous voice 
of his country, at the head of that government which they 
had substituted for a throne, and his eye looking to fu- 
turity, was intent upon securing to after ages, not a 
throne for a seat to his own descendants, but an immove- 
able seat upon which the descendants of his country 
might sit in peace, and freedom, and happiness, if so it 
please Heaven, to the end of time. 

That to the accomplishment of this task he looked 
forward with a searching eye, and even an over-anxious 
heart, will not be surprising to any who understands 
his character, or is capable of comprehending the mag- 
nitude and difficulty of the task itself 

There are incidental to the character of man two 
qualities, both developed by his intercourse with his fel- 
low-creatures, and both belonging to the immortal part 
oi his nature ; of elements apparently so opposed and 



62 

inconsistent with each other, as to be irreconcilable to- 
gether ; but yet indispensable in their union to consti- 
tute the highest excellence of the human character. 
They are the spirit of command, and the spirit of meek- 
ness. They have been exemplified in the purity of 
ideal perfection, .only once in the history of mankind, 
and that was in the mortal life of the Saviour of the 
world. It would seem to have been exhibited on earth 
by his supernatural character, as a model to teach mor- 
tal man, to what sublime elevation his nature is capa- 
ble of ascending. They had been displayed, though not 
in the same perfection by the preceding legislator of i 
the children of Israel ; — | 

I 
" That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed i 

In the beginning, how the heavens and earth i 

Rose out of Chaos ;" 

but SO little were they known, or conceived of in the an- j 
tiquity of profane history, that in the poems of Homer, 
that unrivalled delineator of human character in the he- \ 
roic ages, there is no attempt to introduce them in the 
person of any one of his performers, human or divine. 
In the poem of his Homan imitator and rival, a feeble 
exemplification of them is shadowed forth in the incon- ^ 
sistent composition of the pious ^Eneas; but history, j 
ancient or modern, had never exhibited in the real hfe 
of man, an example in which those two properties were 
so happily blended together, as they were in the person 
of George Washington. These properties belong rather 
to the moral than the intellectual nature of man. They 



53 

are not unfrequently found in minds little cultivated by 
science, but they require for the exercise of that mutual 
control which guards them from degenerating into arro- 
gance or weakness, the guidance of a sound judg- 
ment, and the regulation of a profound sense of respon- 
sibility to a higher Power. It was this adaptation of the 
character of Washington to that of the institution over 
the composition of which he had presided, as he was 
now called to preside over its administration, which 
constituted one of the most favorable omens of its 
eventful stability and success. 

But this institution was republican, and even demo- 
cratic. And here not to be misunderstood, I mean by 
democratic, a government, the administration of w^hich 
must always be rendered comfortable to that predomi- 
nating public opinion, which even in the ages of heathen 
antiquity, was denominated the queen of the world : and 
by republican I mean a government reposing, not upon the 
virtues or the powers of any one man — not upon that 
honour, which Montesquieu lays down as the funda- 
mental principle of monarchy — far less upon that 
fear which he pronounces the basis of despotism ; but 
upon that virtue which he, a noble of aristocratic peer- 
age, and the subject of an absolute monarch, boldly pro- 
claims as a fundamental principle of republican govern- 
ment. The Constitution of the United States was re- 
publican and democratic — but the experience of all 
former ages had shown that of all human governments, 
democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short- 
lived; and it was obvious that if virtue — the virtue 
of the people, was the foundation of republican govern- 



54 

ment, the stability and duration of the government must 
depend upon the stabiUty and duration of the virtue by 
which it is sustained. ' - 

Now the virtue which had been infused into the Con- 
stitution of the United States, and was to give to its 
vital existence the stability and duration to which it 
w^as destined, was no other than the concretion of those 
abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the 
Declaration of Independence — namely, the self-evident 
truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man, of 
the indefeasible constituent and dissolvent sovereignty 
of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and 
wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler 
of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sov- 
ereign, constituent, and dissolvent power. 

This was the platform upon which the Constitution 
of the United States had been erected. Its VIRTUES, 
its republican character, consisted in its conformity to 
the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and as its administration must necessarily 
be always pliable to the fluctuating varieties of public 
opinion ; its stability and duration by a like overruling 
and irresistible necessity, was to depend upon the sta- 
bility and duration in the hearts and minds of the peo- 
ple of that virtue, or in other words, of those principles, 
proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and 
embodied in the Constitution of the United States. 

With these considerations, we shall be better able to 
comprehend the feelings of repugnance, of pain, of an- 
guish, of fearful forebodings, with which Washington 
had consented to be placed at the head of this new and 



55 

untried experiment to consolidate the people of the 
thirteen then disunited states into one confederated and 
permanent happy Union. For his own integrity and 
firmness he could answer ; and these were sufficient to 
# redeem his own personal responsibihty — but he was 
embarking on this ocean of difficulty a good name 
already achieved by toils, and dangers, and services un- 
paralleled in human history — surpassing in actual value 
the richest diadem upon earth, and more precious in 
his estimation than the throne of the universal globe, 
had it been offered as an alternative to his choice. 

He knew the result would not depend upon him. 
His reliance was upon the good providence of Heaven. 
He foresaw that he might be deserted by all mankind. 
The Constitution itself had been extorted from the 
grinding necessity of a reluctant nation. The people 
only of eleven of the thirteen primitive states had 
sanctioned it by their adoption. A stubborn, unyield- 
ing resistance against its adoption had manifested itself 
in some of the most pov/erful states in the Union, and 
when overpowered by small majorities in their conven- 
tions, had struggled in some instances successfully, to 
recover their ascendancy by electing to both Houses of 
Congress members who had signalized themselves in 
opposition to the adoption of the Constitution. A sul- 
len, embittered, exasperated spirit was boiling in the 
bosoms of the defeated, then styled anti-Federal party, 
whose rallying cry was state rights — state sover- 
eignty — state independence. To this standard no 
small number even of the ardent and distinguished 



56 

patriots of the Revolution had attached themselves 
with partial affection. State sovereignty — unlimited 
state sovereignty, amenable not to the authority of the 
Union, but only to the people of the disunited state 
itself, had, with the left-handed wisdom characteristic 
of faction, assumed the mask of liberty, pranked her- 
self out in the garb of patriotism, and conrted the pop- 
ular favour in each state by appeals to their separate 
independence — affecting to style themselves exclu- 
sively Republicans, and stigmatizing the Federahsts, 
and even Washington himself their head, as monarch- 
ists and tories. 

On the other hand, no small number of the Federal- 
ists, sickened by the wretched and ignominious failure 
of the Articles of Confederation to fulfil the promise 
of the Revolution ; provoked at once and discouraged 
by the violence and rancour of the opposition against 
their strenuous and toilsome endeavours to raise their 
country from her state of prostration ; chafed and 
goaded by the misrepresentations of their motives, and 
the reproaches of their adversaries, and imputing to 
them in turn, deliberate and settled purposes to dis- 
solve the Union, and resort to anarchy for the repair of 
ruined fortunes — distrusted even the efficacy of the 
Constitution itself, and with a weakened confidence in 
the virtue of the people, were inclining to the opinion, 
that the only practicable substitute for it would be a 
government of greater energy than that presented by 
the Convention. There were among them numerous 
warm and sincere admirers of the British Constitution; 



57 

disposed to confide rather to the inherent strength of 
the government than to the self-evident truths of the 
Declaration of Independence, for the preservation of 
the rights of property and perhaps of persons — and 
with these discordant feelings and antagonizing opin- 
ions, were intermingled on both sides individual inter- 
ests and ambitions, counteracting each other as in the 
conduct and management of human affairs they always 
have and always will — not without a silent and secret 
mixture of collateral motives and impulses, from the 
domestic intercourse of society, for which the legisla- 
tor is not competent to provide, and the effect of which 
not intuition itself can foresee. 

The same calm, but anxious and even distrusting 
contemplation of the prospect before him, and of the 
difficulties and dangers which he was destined to en- 
counter in his new career, followed him after he re- 
ceived the annunciation of his election, and the sum- 
mons to repair to his post. The moment of his depar- 
ture from the residence of his retirement, was thus 
recorded in his diary : ^' About ten o'clock I bade adieu 
to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic feli- 
city ; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and 
'gainful sensations, than I have words to express, set out 
for New York— with the best disposition to render ser- 
vice to my country in obedience to its call, but wdth 
less hope of answering its expectations." 

His progress from Mount Vernon to New York, was 
one triumphal procession. At Alexandria, at George- 
town, at Philadelphia, at Trenton, at Brunswick, at the 

8 



68 



borders of the state of New Jersey, at Elizabethtown 
Point, he was surrounded, addressed, escorted, by 
crowds of his grateful, confiding, hoping, affectionate 
fellow-citizens, of all classes, of both sexes, of every 
age and condition, showering upon him in every vari- 
ety of form demonstrations of the most enthusiastic 
attachment. Corporations of magistrates addressed 
him in strains of pious, patriotic, and fervid eloquence. 
The soldiers of their country, in the prime of life, in 
the pride and pomp of war, but in the circumstance of 
honourable peace, preceded him as a guard of orna- 
ment and of glory. At his passage over the Schuylkill 
bridge, a crown of unfading laurel was unconsciously 
to himself, dropped by a blooming boy from a thickly 
laurelled arch upon his head. At Trenton, he was 
welcomed by a band of aged matrons commemorating his 
noble defence of them, thirteen years before on that 
spot, at the turning tide of the War of Independence — 
while their virgin daughters strewed the path before 
him with flowers, and chanting a song like that of Mir- 
iam, hailed him as their protector, who had been the 
defender of their mothers. A committee of Congress 
met him on his approach to the Point, where a richly 
ornamented barge of thirteen oars, manned by thirteen 
branch pilots of your own harbour, prepared by your 
forefathers, then the inhabitants of your bright-starred 
city, was in waiting to receive him. In this barge he 
embarked. But the bosom of the waters around her, 
as she swept along, was as populous as had been the 
shores. The garish streamers floated upon the gale — 



69 



songs of enchantment resounded from boat to boat, in- 
termingled with the clashing of cymbals, with the echo- 
ing of horns, with the warbling of the flute, and the 
mellowing tones of the clarionet, weakened, but soften- 
ed as if into distance, by the murmur of the breeze and 
the measured dashing of the waters from the oars, till 

on reaching your city ! but let his own 

diary record the emotions of his soul : " The display of 
boats," — I quote from his biographer, the lamented late 
Chief Justice Marshall, — " which attended and joined on 
this occasion, some with vocal, and others with instru- 
mental music on board, the decorations of the ships, the 
roar of cannon, and the loud acclamations of the 
people, which rent the sky as I passed along the 
wharves, filled my mind with sensations as PAINFUL 
(contemplating the reverse of this scene, which may 
be the case after all my labours to do good) as they 
were pleasing." 

How delightful is it, my beloved countrymen, on this 
festive day of jubilee, commemorating that day so preg- 
nant with your weal or wo, and with that of your chil- 
dren's children, how delightful is it at the distance of 
fifty years from that day of promised blessings and of 
anticipated disappointments, to reflect that all the fairest 
visions of hope were to be more than realized, and all the 
apprehensions of wary prudence and self-distrusting 
wisdom more than dissipated and dispelled. 

Yes, my countrymen, we have survived to this day 
of jubilee, and the only regret which shades the sober 
certainty of waking bliss, with which he who now ad- 



60 

dresses you, turns back the retrospective eye upon tlie 
long career between that time and the present, is the 
imperfection of his power to dehneate with a pencil of 
phosphorus, the contrast between the national condition 
of your forefathers at that day, as it had been allotted to 
them by the articles of confederation, and your present 
state of associated existence, as it has been shaped and 
modified by the Constitution of the United States, ad- 
ministered by twenty -five biennial Congresses, and eight 
Presidents of the United States. 

By the adoption and organization of the Constitution 
of the United States, these principles had been settled : — 

1. That the affairs of the people of the United States 
were thenceforth to be administered, not by a confeder- 
acy, or mere league of friendship between the sovereign 
states, but by a government, distributed into the three 
great departments — legislative, judicial, and executive. 

2. That the powers of government should be limited 
to concerns interesting to the whole people, leaving the 
mternal administration of each state, in jpeace, to its own 
constitution and laws, proAdded that they should be 
fepuUican, and interfering with them as little as should 
be necessary in war. 

3. That the legislative power of this government 
should be divided between two assemblies, one repre- 
senting directly the people of the separate states ; and 
the other their legislatures. 

4. That the executive jporver of this government 
should be vested in one person chosen for four years, with 
certain qualifications of age and nativity, re-ehgible 



61 

without limitation, and invested with a qualified nega- 
tive upon the enactment of the laws. 

5. That the judicial power should consist of tribunals 
inferior and supreme, to be instituted and organized by 
Congress, but to be composed of persons holding their 
offices during good behaviour, that is, removable only 
by impeachment. 

The organization, and constitution of the subordi- 
nate executive departments, were also left to the discre- 
tionary power of Congress. 

But the exact limits of legislative, judicial, and exec- 
utive power, have never been defined, and the distinc- 
tion between them is so little understood without refer- 
ence to certain theories of government, or to specific 
institutions, that a very intelligent, well-informed and 
learned foreigner, with whom I once conversed, upon 
my using the words executive power, said to me, "I sup- 
pose by the executive power, you mean the power that 
MAKES the laws." .... Nor is this mistake 
altogether unexampled, even among ourselves ; exam- 
ples might be adduced in our history, national and con- 
federate, in which the incumbents both of judicial and 
executive offices have mistaken themselves for the power 
that makes the laws — as on the other hand examples 
yet more frequent might be cited of legislators, and 
even legislatures, who have mistaken themselves to be 
^ judges, or executives supreme. 

The legislative, judicial, and executive powers, like 
the prismatic colours of the rainbow, are entirely sep- 
arate and distinct ; but they melt so imperceptibly into 



62 

eacli other that no human eye can discern the exact 
boundary line between them. The broad features of 
distinction between them are perceptible to all; but per- 
haps neither of them can be practically exercised 
without occasional encroachment upon the borders of its 
neighbour. The Constitution of the United States has 
not pretended to confine either of the great departments 
of its government exclusively within its own limits. 
Both the senate and the house of representatives possess, 
and occasionally exercise, both judicial and executive 
powers, and the president has at all times a qualified nega- 
tive upon legislation, and a judicial power of remission. 
To complete the organization of the government by 
the institution of the chief executive departments and 
the establishment of judicial courts, was among the first 
duties of Congress. The constitution had provided that 
all the public functionaries of the Union, not only of the 
general but of all the state governments, should be un- 
der oath or affirmation for its support. The homage of 
religious faith was thus superadded to all the obligations 
of temporal law, to give it strength ; and this confirma- 
tion of an appeal to the responsibilities of a future om- 
nipotent judge, vv^as in exact conformity with the whole 
tenor of the Declaration of Independence — guarded 
against abusive extension by a further provision, 
that no religious test should ever be required as a quali- 
fication to any office or pubhc trust under the United 
States. The first act of the Congress, therefore, was to 
regulate and administer the oaths thus required by the 
Constitution. 



63 

The Constitution had already ^^ formed a more perfect 
union " of the people of the United States ; but it was 
not yet consummated or completed. The people of 
Khode Island had taken no part in the formation of the 
^ Constitution, and refused their sanction to it. They had 
virtually seceded from the Union. North Carolina had 
been represented in the Convention at Philadelphia, but 
her people had refused to ratify their constitutional act. 

Recent events in our history, to which I wish to make 
no unnecessary allusion, but to which the rising gen- 
eration of our country cannot and ought not to close 
their eyes, have brought again into discussion questions, 
which, at the period to which we are now reverting, 
were of the deepest and most vital interest to the con- 
tinued existence of the Union itself The question 
whether any one state of the Union had the right to 
secede from the confederacy at her pleasure, was then 
practically solved. The question of the right of the 
people of any one state, to nullify within her borders 
any legislative act of the general government, was in- 
volved in that of the right of secession, without, how- 
ever, that most obnoxious feature of the modern doc- 
trine of nullification and secession — the violation of 
the plighted faith of the nullifying or seceding state. 

Rhode Island had not only neglected to comply with 
the requisitions of the confederation-Congress to sup- 
ply the funds necessary to fulfil the pubUc engagements ; 
but she alone had refused to invest the Congress with 
powers indispensable for raising such supplies. She 
had refused to join in the united effort to revivify the sus- 



64 

pended animation of the confederacy, and she still defied 
the warning of her sister states, that if she persevered 
in this exercise of her sovereignty and independence, 
they would leave her alone in her glory, and take up 
their march in united column without her. North 
Carolina, not more remiss than her sister states in 
the fulfilment of her obligations, after joining them 
in the attempt to draw the bonds of union closer to- 
gether by a new compact, still refused to ratify it, 
though recommended by the signature of her own del- 
egates and under a similar admonition. Rhode Island 
and North Carolina still held back. The Union and 
Washino^ton marched without them. Their ri^ht to 
secede was not contested. No unfriendly step to in- 
jure was taken ; no irritating measure to provoke them 
was proposed. The door was left open for them to 
return, whenever the proud and wayward spirit of state 
sovereignty should give way to the attractions of clear- 
er-sighted self-interest and kindred sympathies. In the 
first acts of Congress they were treated as foreigners^ 
but with reservations to them of the power to resume 
the national privileges with the national character, and 
when within two years they did return, without invita- 
tion or repulsion, they were received with open arms. 

The questions of secession, or of resistance under 
state authority, against the execution of the laws of the 
Union within any state, can never again be presented 
under circumstances so favourable to the pretensions 
of the separate state, as they were at the organization 
of the Constitution of the United States. At that time 



65 

Rhode Island and North Carolina might justly have 
pleaded, that their sister states were bound to them by 
a compact into which they had voluntarily entered, with 
stipulations that it should undergo no alteration but by 
unanimous consent. That the Constitution was a con- 
federate Union founded upon principles totally differ- 
ent, and to which not only they were at liberty to refuse 
their assent, but which all the other states combined, 
could not without a breach of their own faith establish 
among themselves, without the free consent of all the 
partners to the prior contract. That the confederation 
could not otherwise be dissolved, and that by adhering 
to it, they were only performing their own engage- 
ments with good faith, and claiming their own unques- 
tionable rights. 

The justification of the people of the eleven states, 
which had adopted the Constitution of the United 
States, and of that provision of the Constitution itself, 
which had prescribed that the ratification of nine states 
should suffice to absolve them from the bonds of the 
old confederation, and to establish the new Govern- 
ment as between themselves, was found in the princi- 
ples of the Declaration of Independence. The confed- 
eration had failed to answer the purposes for which 
governments are instituted among men. Its powers 
or its impotence operated to the destruction of those 
ends, which it is the object of government to promote. 
The people, therefore — who had made it their own only by 
their acquiescence — acting under their responsibility 
to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, absolved them- 

9 



66 



selves from the bonds of tlie old confederation, and 
bound themselves by the new and closer ties of the 
Constitution. In performing that act, they had felt the 
duty of obtaining the co-operation to it, of a majority of 
the whole people, by requiring the concurrence of ma- 
jorities in nine out of the thirteen states, and they had 
neither prepared nor proposed any measure of com- 
pulsion, to draw the people of any of the possibly dis- 
senting states into the new partnership, against their 
will. They passed upon the old confederation the 
same sentence, which they had pronounced in dissolv- 
ing their connexion with the British nation, and they 
pledged their faith to each other anew, to a far closer 
and more intimate connexion. 

It is admitted, it was admitted then, that the people 
of Rhode Island, and of North Carolina, were free to 
reject the new Constitution ; but not that they could 
justly claim the continuance of the old Confederation. 
The law of political necessity, expounded by the judg- 
ment of the sovereign constituent people, responsible 
only to God, had abolished that. The people of Rhode 
Island, and of North Carolina, might dissent from the 
more perfect union, but they must acquiesce in the ne- 
cessity of the separation. 

Of that separation they soon felt the inconvenience > 
to themselves, and rejoined the company from which 
they had strayed. The number of the primitive States 
has since doubled, by voluntary and earnest appHca- 
tions for admission. It' has often been granted as a 
privilege and a favour. Sometimes delayed beyond 



67 

the time when it was justly due — and never decUned 
bj any one State entitled to demand it. 

Yet the boundary line between the constitutional au- 
I thority of the General Government, and that of the 
b separate States, was not drawn in colours so distinct 
I and clear, as to have escaped diversities of opinion, and 
grave and protracted controversy. While the people 
of distant lands, of foreign races, and of other tongues, 
have solicited admittance to the North American Union, 
and have been denied, more than once have serious 
and alarming collisions of conflicting jurisdiction arisen 
between the General Government, and those of the 
separate states, threatening the dissolution of the Uni- 
on itself The right of a single state, or of several of 
the states in combination together, to secede from the 
Union, the right of a single state, without seceding from 
the Union, to declare an act of the General Congress, 
a law of the United States, null and void, within the 
borders of that state, have both been at various times, 
and in different sections of the Union, directly asserted, 
fervently controverted, and attempted to be carried into 
execution. It once accomplished a change of the ad- 
ministration of the General Government, and then was 
laid aside. It has occasionally wasted itself in abortive 
projects of new confederacies, and has recently proceed- 
ed to the extremity of assembling a Convention of the 
people of one state in the Union, to declare a law of the 
United States unconstitutional, null, and void. But the 
law was nevertheless executed ; and in this, as in other 
instances, a temporary turbulent resistance against the 



68 

lawful powers of Congress, under the banners of State 
sovereignty, and State rights, is now terminating in a 
more devoted adherence and wiUing subserviency to 
the authority of the Union. 

This has been the result of the working of the Insti- 
tution, and although now, as heretofore, it has been ef- 
fected by means and in a manner so unforeseen and 
unexpected, as to baffle all human penetration, and to 
take reflection itself by surprise ; yet the uniformity of 
the result often repeated by the experience of half a 
century, has demonstrated the vast superiority of the 
Constitution of the United States over the Confedera- 
tion, as a system of Government to control the tem- 
porary passions of the people, by the permanent curb of 
their own interest. 

In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a 
State to nullify an act of Congress, is too absurd for 
argument, and too odious for discussion. The right of 
a state to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by 
the principles of the Declaration of Independence. 
Nations acknowledge no judge between them upon 
earth, and their Governments from necessity, must in 
their intercourse with each other decide when the fail- 
ure of one party to a contract to perform its obliga- 
tions, absolves the other from the reciprocal fulfilment 
of his own. But this last of earthly powers is not ne- 
cessary to the freedom or independence of states, con- 
nected together by the immediate action of the people, 
of whom they consist. To the people alone is there 
reserved, as well the dissolving, as the constituent pow- 



69 

er, and that power can be exercised by them only un- 
der the tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive 
justice of Heaven. 

With these quahfications, we may admit the same 
right as vested in the people of every state in the Union, 
with reference to the General Government, which was 
exercised by the people of the United Colonies, with 
reference to the Supreme head of the British empire, 
of which they formed a part — and under these hmita- 
tions, have the people of each state in the Union a 
right to secede from the confederated Union itself 

Thus stands the RIGHT. But the indissoluble 
link of union between the people of the several states 
of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, 
but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may 
Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of 
these states shall be alienated from each other ; w^hen 
the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, 
or coUisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the 
bands of political association will not long hold togeth- 
er parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of con- 
ciliated interests and kindly sympathies ; and far better 
will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part 
in friendship from each other, than to be held together 
by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to 
the precedents which occurred at the formation and 
Q, adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more per- 
fect union, by dissolving that which could no longer 
bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by 
the law of political gravitation to the centre. 



70 

While the Constitution was thus accomplishing the 
first object declared by the people as their motive for 
ordaining it, by forming a more perfect union, it be- 
came the joint and co-ordinate duty of the legislative 
and executive departments, to provide for the second 
of those objects, which involved within itself all the 
rest, and indeed all the purposes of government. For 
justice, defined by the Institutes of Justinian, as the 
constant and perpetual will of securing to every one 
his right, includes the whole duty of man in the social 
institutions of society, toward his neighbour. 

To the establishment of this JUSTICE, the joint and 
harmonious co-operation of the legislative and execu- 
tive departments was required, and it was one of the 
providential incidents of the time, that this zealous and 
hearty co-operation had been secured, by that over-ru- 
ling and universal popularity with which the Chief 
Magistrate was inducted into his most arduous and 
responsible office. 

It has perhaps never been duly remarked, that under 
the Constitution of the United States the powers of the 
executive department explicitly and emphatically con- 
centrated in one person, are vastly more extensive 
and complicated than those of the legislative. The 
language of the instrument, in conferring legislative 
authority is, ^'All legislative powers herein granted, shall 
be vested in a Congress of the United States, which 
shall consist of a Senate and House of Representa- 
tives." But the executive trust it committed in unre- 
stricted terms : '' THE executive power shall be vested 



71 

in a President of the United States of America " The 
legislative powers of Congress are, therefore, limitisd 

I to specific grants contained in the Constitution itself, 
all restricted on one side by the power of internal le- 

.^^' gislation within the separate States, and on the other, 
by the laws of nations, otherwise and more properly 
called the rights of war and peace, consisting of all the 
rules of intercourse between independent nations. 
These are not subject to the legislative authority of 
any one nation, and they are, therefore, not included 
within the powers of Congress. But the executive 
power vested in the President of the United States, 
confers upon him the power, and enjoins upon him 
the duty, of fulfilling all the duties and of exacting all 
the rights of the nation in her intercourse with all the 
other nations of the earth. The powers of declaring 
war, of regulating commerce, of defining and punishing 
piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and 
offences AGAINST THE LAW OF NATIONS, 
are among the special grants to Congress, but over that 
law itself, thus expressly recognised, and all-compre- 
hensive as it is, Congress has no alterative power. 
While the power of executing it, is conferred in unlim- 
ited terms upon the President of the United States. 

The exercise of this more than dictatorial power is 
indeed controlled, first, by the participation of the Sen- 
ate in the conclusion of treaties and appointments to 
office. Secondly, by the reservation of the discretion- 
ary power of the House of Representatives, to refuse 
the supplies necessary for the executive action. And 



72 



thirdly, by the power reserved to the house to impeacli 
the President for mal-administration, and to the senate 
to try that impeachment, and sentence him to removal 
and to disqualification for official station for ever. 
These are great and salutary checks upon the abusive 
application of the granted power. But the power is not 
the less granted. 

And herein was the greatest and most pernicious de- 
ficiency of the articles of confederation, most efifect- 
ively supplied. The Congress of the confederation had 
no executive power. They could contract, but they could 
not perform. Hence it was impossible for them to es- 
tablish justice in the intercourse of the nation with for- 
eign states. They could neither exact the justice due 
to the country, nor fulfil the duties of justice to others, 
and this was the reason assigned by the British govern- 
ment for declining to regulate the commerce between 
the two countries by treaty. 

The establishment of justice in the intercourse be- 
tween the nation and foreign powers, was thus pre-em- 
inently committed to the custody of one man, but that 
man was George Washington. 

How far the establishment of justice, by the adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the nation, abroad and at home, 
was accomplished by the Constitution of the United 
States, can be estimated only by a review of the history 
of fifty years. For this, neither the time nor the limits 
within which this discourse must be circumscribed, will 
permit more than a rapid and imperfect summary. 

The relations of the United States with the other pow- 



73 

ers of the world, were then sHght and of trilling impor- 
tance, in comparison with what they were destined to be- 
come. In their colonial state their, commercial inter- 
course had been restricted almost exclusively to the 
mother-country. s Their political relations were only 
those of a subordinate dependance of a great empire. 

The Declaration of Independence recognised the Eu- 
ropean law of nations, as practised among Christian na- 
tions, to be that by which they considered themselves 
bound, and of which they claimed the rights. This sys- 
tem is founded upon the principle, that the state of na- 
ture between men and between nations, is a state of 
peace. But there was a Mahometan law of nations, 
which considered the state of nature as a state of war 
— an Asiatid law of nations, which excluded all foreign^ 
ers from admission within the territories of the state — 
a colonial law of nations, which excluded all foreigners 
from admission within the colonies — and a savage 
Indian law of nations, by which the Indian tribes within 
the bounds of the United States, were under their 'pro teC' 
tioUy though in a condition of undefined dependance upon 
the governments of the separate states. With all these 
different communities, the relations of the United States 
were from the time when they had become an independ- 
ent nation, variously modified according to the opera- 
tion of those various laws. It was the purpose of the 
Constitution of the United States to establish justice over 
them all. 

The commercial and political relations of the Union 

with the Christian European nations, were principally 

10 



74 

with Great Britain, France, and Spain, and considera 
bly with the Netherlands and Portugal. With all these 
there was peace ; but with Britain and Spain, contro- 
versies involving the deepest interests and the very ex- 
istence of the nation, were fermenting, and negociations 
of the most humiliating character were pending, from 
which the helpless imbecility of the confederation 
afforded no prospect of relief. With the other Euro- 
pean states there was scarcely any intercourse. The 
Baltic was an unknown sea to our navigators, and all the 
rich and classical regions of the Mediterranean were 
interdicted to the commercial enterprise of our mer- 
chants, and the dauntless skill of our mariners, by the 
Mahometan merciless warfare of the Barbary powers. 
Scarcely had the peace of our independence been con- 
cluded, when three of our merchant-vessels had been 
captured by the corsairs of Algiers, and their crews, 
citizens of the Union, had been pining for years in 
slavery, appealing to their country for redemption, in 
vain. Nor was this all. Bytheoperationofthisstateof 
things, all the shores of the Black sea, of the whole Med- 
iterranean, of the islands on the African coast, of the 
southern ports of France, of all Spain and of Portugal, 
were closed against our commerce, as if they had been 
hermetically sealed ; while Britain, everywhere our rival l 
and competitor was counteracting by every stimulant 
within her power every attempt on our part to com- 
pound by tribute with the Barbarian for peace. 

Great Britain had also excluded us from all com- 
merce in our own vessels with her colonies, and France, 



75 

notwithstanding her alliance with us during the war, 
had after the conclusion of the peace adopted the same 
policy. She was jealous of our aggrandizement, fearful 
of our principles, linked v/ith Spain in the project of de- 
barring us from the navigation of the Mississippi, and 
settled in the determination to shackle us in the devel- 
opment of the gigantic powers which, with insidious 
sagacity, she foresaw might be abused. 

Notwithstanding all these discouragements, the inex- 
tinguishable spirit of freedom, which had carried your 
forefathers through the exterminating war of the Revo- 
lution, was yet unsuppressed. At the very time when 
the nerveless confederacy could neither protect nor re- 
deem their sailors from Algerine captivity, the floating 
city of the Taho beheld the stripes and stars of the Union, 
opening to the breeze from a schooner of thirty tons, and 
inquired where was the ship of which that frail fabric 
was doubtless the tender. The Southern ocean was 
still vexed with the harpoons of their whalemen ; but 
Britain excluded their oil, by prohibitory duties and the 
navigation act, from her markets, and the more indulgent 
liberality of France would consent to the illumination 
of her cities by the quakers of Nantucket, only upon 
condition that they should forsake their native island, 
and become the naturalized denizens of Dunkirk. 

In the same year, when the Convention at Philadel- 
phia was occupied in preparing the Constitution of the 
United States for the consideration of the people, two 
vessels, called the Columbia and the Washington, fitted 
out by a company of merchants at Boston, sailed upon 



76 

a voyage combining the circumnavigation of the globe^ 
discovery upon the shores of the Pacific ocean, and 
the trade with the savages of the Sandwich Islands, 
and with the celestial empire of China, all in one under- 
taking. The result of this voyage was the discovery 
of the Columbia river, so named from the ship which 
first entered within her capes, since unjustly confound- 
ed with the fabulous Oregon or river of the West, but 
really securing to the United States the right of prior 
discovery, and laying the foundation of the right of 
extension of our territory from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific ocean. 

All this however was but the development of na- 
tional character in the form of private enterprise. The 
foreign affairs of the Union when President Washing- 
ton assumed the administration of the executive power, 
were in a state of chaos, out of which an orderly and 
harmonious world was to be educed. 

In conferring the executive power upon the Presi- 
dent of the United States, the Constitution had left its 
subordinate organization partly to the discretion of 
Congress. It had spoken of heads and chief officers 
of the executive departments, but without defining their 
offices, or prescribing their functions. Under the Rev- 
olutionary Congress, the executive power, such as it 
was, had been exercised by committees of their own 
body. Under the confederation Congress, by Secreta- 
ries of Foreign Affairs and of War, and successively 
by a single financier, and by a board of Commissioners 
of the Treasury. 



77 

The first Constitutional Congress, in the true spirit 
of the Constitution itself, instituted three executive de- 
partments, each with a single head, under the denom- 
ination of Secretaries of Foreign Affairs, of the Treas- 
ury, and of War. There was no Home Department, 
a deficiency which has not yet been supplied — but on 
reconsideration, the first Congress at their first session, 
combined the duties of the Home Department with 
those of Foreign Afiairs, by substituting a Department 
and Secretary of State in the place of a Department 
and Secretary of Foreign Affairs. There was no 
navy — not so much as a barge — and of course 
no Navy Department, or Secretary of the Navy. 
That was to be created, and the Department was in- 
stituted in the second year of the succeeding adminis- 
tration. 

In the interval, until the organization of the new de- 
partments, the Secretaries of Foreign Affairs and of 
War, of the confederation Congress, continued by 
order of President Washington to execute the duties 
of their respective offices. 

During the first Congress also, the Judiciary Depart- 
ment was organized by the establishment of a Supreme 
Circuit, and District Courts. The Ordinance for the 
government of the Northwestern Territory was adapt- 
ed to the newly constituted Government, as was the 
establishment of the Post Office. 

In the erection of the Executive Departments a 
question arose, and was debated with great earnestness 
and pertinacity, in both houses of Congress, the de- 



7§ 

cision upon which, in perfect conformity with the spirit 
of the Constitution, settled the character of that instru- 
ment as it has continued to this day. The Constitution 
had prescribed that the President should nominate, and 
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
should «p^ozW, all the officers of the United States, 
with the exception that Congress might by law vest 
the appointment of such inferior officers as they should 
think proper in the President alone, in the courts of 
law, or in the heads of departments. The Constitu- 
tion had also provided, that the President should com- 
mission all the officers of the United States — and that 
the judges both of the supreme and inferior courts 
should hold their offices during good behaviour. But 
it had prescribed no term of duration to executive 
offices, civil or miUtary, nor how, nor by whom, nor for 
what, they should be removable from office. The in- 
stitution of the first Executive Department gave rise to 
that question. After a long and able discussion, it was 
ultimately settled, that by the investment of the exec- 
utive power in the President, and the duty imposed 
upon him to take care that the laws should be faithful- 
ly executed, the discretionary power of removing all 
subordinate executive offices must necessarily be vest- 
ed in him ; and the law was accordingly so expressed. 
It must be admitted that this, like all other discretion- 
ary powers, is susceptible of great abuse — but while 
exercised as it always must be, under the powerful in- 
fluence of public opinion, its abuse cannot be so per- 
nicious to the welfare of the community, as would be 



79 



a tenure of ministerial office, independent of the supe- 
rior, responsible for its faithful execution. 

Another, and perhaps a still more important charac- 
ter was given by President Washington to the govem- 
%* ment of the United States, in all their relations with 
foreign powers, by the principle which he assumed, 
and the example which he set to his successors, of re- 
ferring the ministers from foreign powers, to the head 
of the Department of State, for all direct negotiations 
with which they might be charged by their govern- 
ments. 

The Count de Moustier happened at that time to be 
the Minister of France to the United States. He had 
been appointed by the unfortunate Louis XVI., in the 
last days of his absolute power. A spark, emitted 
from the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, had fallen into the powder-magazine of mon- 
archy, and inexpressibly terrible was the explosion 
about to ensue. Among the last evidences of the anti- 
republican spirit of the Bourbon dynasty, was an effort 
of this plenipotentiary minister to degrade the Chief 
Magistrate of the newly constituted Republic to an 
official level with himself, a minister of the second 
rank, commissioned by an European king. Imme- 
diately after the inauguration of President Washing- 
ton, the Count de Moustier addressed a note directly to 
him, requesting a personal interview. On receiving 
for answer that the Secretary for Foreign Affairs was 
the officer with whom his official communications 
should still be held, he persisted in his application for 



80 

a personal conference with the President, who uniting 
firmness of purpose with undeviating courtesy of forms, 
indulgently granted his request. He received the Count 
in a private interview, and listened for an hour to 
an argument, fortified by a confidential private letter 
which the royal envoy had the assurance to deliver to 
him, in which, under the base pretension of a supposed 
unfriendly disposition of the Secretary of Foreign Af- 
fairs towards France, he urged the adoption of a prac- 
tice of direct inter-communication between the Presi- 
dent of the United States and himself, in all his diplo- 
matic negotiations, without the intervention of any third 
person whomsoever. 

"With a perfect preservation of patience and of good 
humour, the President answered his reasoning and re- 
ferred him again for his future ofi[icial transactions to the 
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, who, he assured him, en- 
tertained no feelings towards France but such as would 
render entire justice to her rights and her representative. 
The Count de Moustier fell back into his proper station, 
and very soon after was recalled by his master, and had 
his place supplied by the representative of another 
shade in the transition of France from an arbitrary 
monarchy to a portentious and short-lived nominal de- 
mocracy. 

The pretension that the President of the United 
States was to be considered by the ministers of foreign 
nations, not as the chief magistrate of the country, but 
as ranking as a minister of state, subordinate to the sov- 
ereign in European governments, was not confined to the 



8] 

Count de Moustier. It was afterward reproduced in 
still more offensive form, by the first minister from 
France in her republican transformation. It was then 
again repelled and finally withdrawn. Since then the 
President of the United States, in their intercourse with 
foreign nations represents them as their chief, and the 
ministers of foreign powers negotiate with the Secreta- 
ry of State under his direction, and instructions. 

At the same time. President Washington fully under- 
stood that by the investment of the executive power, he 
was authorized to enter directly into negociation with 
foreign nations, formally or informally, through the de- 
partment of State, or by agents privately accredited by 
himself at his discretion. The state of the public relations 
of Great Britain was then such as rendered it proper for 
him to resume the political intercourse with her govern- 
ment, in the direct, personal, and informal, rather than 
the regular official manner. Shortly after the conclu- 
sion of the peace of independence, the confederation- 
Congress had appointed a minister plenipotentiary to 
Great Britain, and had authorized a treaty of commerce 
on the most liberal terms, to be negotiated with her. 
The minister had been graciously received ; but mutu- 
al reproaches, too /well founded on both sides, of a 
failure to fulfil the stipulations of the treaty of peace, 
had left a rankling of animosity on both sides. The 
British government had declined to conclude a com 
mercial treaty, while the engagements of the treaty of 
peace remained unfulfillecl ; and the impotence of the 

confederation-Congress disabled them from the fulfil- 

11 



82 

ment of the stipulations on our part — particularly with 
regard to debts, the payment of which had been sus- 
pended by the Revolutionary war. After a fruitless 
mission of three years, the minister of the United States 
had returned home, and no minister from Great Britain 
had been accredited to the Congress in return. Imme- 
diately after the close of the first session of the first 
constitutional Congress, during which the judicial depart- 
ment of the government had been organized, and John 
Jay, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to the preceding 
Congress, appointed Chief Justice of the United States, 
and before Thomas Jefferson, appointed Secretary of 
State in his absence, had repaired to his post. President 
Washington, on the 13th of October, 1789, wrote two 
letters to Gouverneur Morris, then in France, but re- 
cently before, a member of the Philadelphia Conven- 
tion which had formed the Constitution, and at an earlier 
date, a member of the confederation-Congress. One 
of these letters was to serve him as a credential to hold 
conferences with the cabinet ministry of Great Britain, 
and the other a letter of instructions upon the topics to 
be discussed with them. 

The glance of a moment at the relative position of 
the two countries at that time, will disclose to an atten- 
tive observer the peculiar propriety of the mode adopt-' 
ed by President Washington, and of the selection of 
the agent for entering upon this negotiation. It will 
serve also to illustrate the wisdom of the extensive 
grant of the executive power in the Constitution of the 
United States, to a single hand. The self-respect of 



83 



the nation would have been humiliated in the eyes of 
the world, by the public and formal appointment of a 
second minister, after the return home of the first, with- 
out the reciprocation of courtesy by the appointment of 
a minister from Great Britain to the United States. 
There was no diplomatic intercourse between the two 
countries ; yet there were great interests involving the 
peace between them, and urgently calling for adjust- 
ment. The commercial intercourse between them was 
very considerable ; but for want of a countervailing 
power of regulation on our part, it was left at the mercy 
of the orders of the British king in council, the predom- 
inating spirit of which influenced by the loyalist refu- 
gees of the Revolution, was envious, acrimonious, and 
vindictive. The forts on the Canadian lakes, the keys 
to our western territories, and the stimulants to savage 
warfare, were withheld, in violation of the treaty of 
peace ; while by the institution of the judicial courts of 
the Union, the door was open for the recovery of British 
debts, and the pretext fdr the detention of the posts was 
removed. It was necessary to advise the British gov- 
ernment of the change which had been effected in our na- 
tional institutions, and of the duty of the new government 
to exact justice from foreign nations, while ready to dis- 
pense it on the part of the nation to them. Yet, as peace 
was of all external blessings, that of which our country at 
that juncture most needed the continuance, it was a dic- 
tate of prudence to take no hasty public step which 
might commit the honour of the country and complicate 
the entanglement from which she was to be extricated- 



. . 84 

Mr. Morris was a distinguished citizen of the United 
States, already in Europe — ^well known in England, 
where he had relatives in the royal service. He had 
been an active member of the Convention which had 
formed the Constitution — a secret mission committed 
to him would attract no premature public notice by any 
personal movement on his part, and whatever the re- 
sult of it might be, the government of the United 
States itself would be uncommitted in the eyes of the 
world, and free to pursue such further course, as jus- 
tice might require, and policy might recommend. 

Mr. Morris executed his trust with faithfulness and 
ability. In personal conference with the Duke of 
Leeds, then the British Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, and with William Pitt, first Lord of the Treas- 
ury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and b}^ corres- 
pondence with the former, he made known to the 
British government the feelings, purposes, and expec- 
tations of the newly organized government of the 
United States with regard to Great Britain — and he 
ascertained the dispositions, the doubts and the reluc- 
tances of the British cabinet toward the United States. 
They still declined the negotiation of a treaty of com- 
merce. They parried, by counter-complaint of the 
non-execution of the treaty of peace, the demand for 
the surrender of the western posts — but they prom- 
ised, with no small hesitation, some supercihous cour- 
tesy and awkward apologies for delay, the appoint- 
ment of a Minister to the United States. 

This negotiation occupied more than one year of 



85 

time — and in February, 1791, just before the expira- 
tion of tbe first Constitutional Congress, President 
Washington communicated to the Senate in secret ses- 
sion the fact of its existence, and the correspondence 
by which it had been conducted. In the Message 
transmitting these documents to the Senate, he said : 
^' I have thought it proper to give you this information, 
as it might at some time have influence on matters 
under your consideration." 

While the negotiation v^as in progress, a controversy 
respecting the northeastern boundary of the United 
States bordering upon the British provinces, then con- 
fined to the question of what river had been intended 
in the treaty of peace, by the name of the St. Croix, 
was kindhng a border war, and compKcating the dif- 
ficulties to be adjusted by negotiation. 

In the summer of 1791, the promised Minister Plen- 
ipotentiary from Great Britain to the United States, 
was sent in the person of Mr. George Hammond, who 
had been the secretary to David Hartley, in the nego- 
tiation of the definitive treaty of peace in 1783. Mr. 
Hammond however had only powers to negotiate, but 
not to conclude — to complain, but not to adjust — to 
receive propositions, but not to accept them. With 
him a full discussion v/as had of all the causes of com- 
plaint subsisting between the parties. In the mean- 
time a change had come over the whole political sys- 
tem of Europe. The principles proclaimed in the 
Declaration of Independence, as at the foundation of 
all lawful government, had been sapping the founda- 



86 

tions of all the governments founded on tlie unlimited 
sovereignty of force — the absolute monarchy of France 
was crumbling into ruin ; a wild and ferocious anarchy, 
under the banners of unbridled Democracy was taking 
its place, and between the furies of this frantic multi- 
tude, and the agonies of immemorial despotism, a war 
of desolation and destruction was sweeping over the 
whole continent of Europe. In this war all the sym- 
pathies of the American people were on the side of 
France and of freedom, but the freedom of France 
was not of the genuine breed. A phantom of more 
than gigantic form had assumed the mask and the garb 
of freedom, and substituted for the principles of the 
Declaration of Independence, anarchy within and con- 
quest without. The revolution of the whole world 
was her war-cry, and the overthow of all established 
governments her avowed purpose. 

Under the impulses of this fiend, France had plunged 
into war with all Europe, and murdered her king, his 
queen, his sister, and numberless of his subjects and 
partisans, with or without the forms of law, by the 
butchery of mock tribunals, or the daggers of a blood- 
thirsty rabble. In this death-struggle between invet- 
erate abuse and hurly-burly innovation, it is perhaps 
impossible even now to say which party had been the 
first aggressor ; but France had been first invaded by 
the combined forces of Austria and Prussia, and under 
banners of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, had become 
an armed nation to expel them from her borders. The 
partialities of the American people still sympathized 



87 

with France. They saw that her cause was the cause 
of national independence. They beUeved her profes- 
sions of hberty, equahty, and fraternity ; and when the 
same Convention which had declared France a repub- 
lic, and deposed and put to death her king, declared 
war against the kings of Great Britain and Spain, shock- 
ed as they were at the merciless extermination of their 
ancient great and good ally, they still favoured at heart 
the cause of France, especially when in conflict under 
the three-coloured banners of liberty, equality, fra- 
ternity, with their ancient common enemy of the Rev- 
olutionary war, the British king, and with their more 
recent, but scarcely less obnoxious foe, the king of Spain. 
At the breaking out of this war, Washington and his 
administration, and with them, the Constitution, and peace 
and existence of the Union, were brought into a new, 
critical, and most perilous position. From the very 
day of his inauguration, notwithstanding his unparallel- 
ed personal popularity, a great, active, and powerful 
opposition to his administration had arisen, consisting at 
first almost universally of the party which had opposed 
the adoption of the Constitution itself — then known by 
the name of anti-federalists. The most plausible and 
the most popular of all the objections to the Constitution, 
had been the accumulation of power in the office of the 
President. His exercise of those powers was watched 
with a jealous and suspicious eye — trifles lighter than 
air in his personal deportment and his domestic estab- 
lishment, were treasured up, and doled out in whispers 
and surmises, that he was affecting the state, and adopt- 



8S 

ing the forms of a monarchy, and when this war be- 
tween the new-born repubhc of France, and our old ty- 
rant, George the Third, blazed out, the party opposed 
to Washington's administration, seized upon it, to em- 
barrass and counteract his policy, by arraying the pas- 
sions of the people, their ardent love of liberty, the 
generous feeling of their national gratitude, their still 
rankling resentments against the beldame step-mother 
Britain, and their soreness under the prevaricating 
chicanery of Spain, at once in l^vour of France and 
against Washington. 

The treaty of alliance with France, of 6th February, 
1778, had stipulated, on the part of the United States, 
a guarantee to the king of France of the possessions of 
the crown of France in America — and one of the first in- 
cidents of the war of republican France with Britain, 
was a British expedition against the French colonies in 
the West Indies. 

By the laws of nations, the duty of the United States 
in this war was neutrality — ■ and their rights were those 
of neutrality. Their unquestionable policy and their 
vital interest was also neutrality. But the maintenance 
of the rights, depended upon the strict performance of 
the duties of neutrality. 

A grave question immediately presented itself, 
whether the guarantee of the French possessions in 
America to the king and crown of France in 1778, was 
so binding upon the United States, as to require them 
to make good that guarantee to the French republic 
by joining her in the war against Great Britain. 



89 

The neutrality of the United States was in the most 
imminent clanger. The war between France and Brit- 
ain, and Spain and the Netherlands, was a maritime 
war. In the spasms of the Revolutionary convulsion, the 
new republic had sent to the United States an incendia- 
ry minister, with a formal declaration, that they did not 
claim the execution of the guarantee in the treaty of 
1778, but stocked with commissions for a mihtary 
expedition against the Spanish territories on our v\^est- 
em borders, and for privateers to be fitted out in our 
ports, and to cruize against all the nations with which 
France was at war. 

All the daring enterprise, the unscrupulous ambition, 
the rapacious avarice floating in the atmosphere of this 
Union, were gathering to a head, and enlisting in this 
cause of republican France. The commissions for the 
military expedition against Louisiana, were distributed 
with so little secresy, that the whole conspiracy was 
soon detected, exposed, and defeated. But the priva- 
teering commissions were accepted in many of our sea- 
ports, and citizens of the United States salHed forth 
from their harbours, under the shelter of neutrahty, in 
vessels, built, armed, equipped, and owned there, against 
the defenceless commerce of friendly nations, and re- 
turned in three days, laden with their spoils, under the 
uniform of the French repubhc, her three-coloured 
cockade, and her watchwords of liberty, equality, and fra- 
ternity — transformed into French citizens, by the plen- 
ipotentiary diploma, and disposing of their plunder under 

the usurped jurisdiction of a French republican consul 

12 



90 

At this crisis Washington submitted to his confiden- 
tial advisers, the heads of the Executive Departments, 
a series of questions, involving the permanent system 
of policy, to be pursued for the preservation of the 
peace, and the fulfilment of the duties of the nation in 
this new and difficult position. The measure imme- 
diately contemplated by him as urgently required, was 
the issuing a proclamation declaring the neutrality of 
the United States in the war, just kindled in Europe ; 
but the obligation of the treaties with France, and par- 
ticularly that of the guarantee, were specially involved 
m the propriety and the particular purport of the proc- 
lamation. On this occasion, a radical difference of opin- 
ion equally dividing the four members of the adminis- 
tration, not upon the expediency of the proclamation, 
but upon the contingent obligation of the guarantee, 
aggravated intensely the embarrassments and difficul- 
ties which the temperance, the fortitude, and the good 
fortune of Washington were destined to encounter and 
to surmount. 

The conduct of Great Britain, the leading party to 
the war with republican France, served only to multi- 
ply and to sharpen the obstructions with which his path 
was beset, and the perplexities of his situation. In the 
origin of the war, the first fountains of human society 
had been disturbed and poisoned. The French Con- 
vention had issued a decree, stimulating the people of 
all the countries around her to rebellion against their 
own governments, with a promise of the support of 
France. Thev had threatened an invasion of Er}* 



91 

gland, in the name of liberty, ecjuality, and fraternity, 
to fraternize with ihe people of the British Islands in 
a revolt against their king ; and strange and incredible 
as it may sound in your ears, there were elements 
within the bosoms of the British islands, of no incon- 
siderable magnitude, prepared to join and assist the threat- 
ened invader ia this unhallowed purpose. A decree of 
the National Convention had forbidden their armies to 
make any prisoners in battle with their foes, or in other 
words to give quarters to the vanquished in arms. 
The mass of the British nation was exasperated to 
madness ; and their government deliberately determined, 
that such an enemy was not entitled to the ordinary 
mitigations of war: that France had put herself out 
of the pale of civilized nations, and that no commerce 
of neutral nations with her was to be tolerated. Be- 
sides and yet more unjustifiable than this, from the 
very commencement of the war, the British govern- 
ment had indulged their naval officers in the out- 
rageous and atrocious practice of impressing men from 
the vessels of the United States upon the high seas — •' 
claiming it against the principles of her own Constitu- 
tion no less than against the principles of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, as a right with regard to her 
own subjects, and leaving the question oi fact, whether 
the impressed seaman was or was not a British sub- 
ject, to the irresponsible discretion or caprice of every 
midshipman in her navy. The practice was not less 
provoking, than the pretension was insolent and unjuSt 
The capture by a naval armament from Great Britain, 



93 i 

i 

of several French islands in the West Indies, gave oc- i 
casion to another conflict of belligerent pretensions and ! 
neutral rights. During the peace that followed the i 
war of the American Revolution, France under the i 
usual maxims of European Colonial policy, had con- i 
fined the commerce of her American possessions to I 
herself When the war came, her own merchant-ves- | 
sels were excluded by the British maritime supremacy J 
from the navigation of the ocean. The French is- ^ 
lands were then opened to the neutral commerce, and 
hence it was that the French Executive Council for- \ 
bore to claim the guarantee stipulated by the treaty of | 
1778 — aware that the neutral commerce of the United 
States would be more useful to the islands, than any | 
assistance that we could give for their defence against * 
Great Britain by war. Upon the opening of the is- 
lands, numerous vessels of the United States crowded 
into their ports, for the enjoyment not only of a profita- 
ble direct trade, but to be freighted for the direct com- 
merce between the Colonies and France herself The 
commanders of the British maritime expedition broke 
up this trade, and captured every vessel engaged in it 
upon w^hich they could lay their hands, whether in 
ports which surrendered to their arms, or upon the high 
seas. 

The temperature of the pubhc mind in calm and 
quiet times, is like the climate of the lofty table-lands 
of the equator, a perpetual spring. Such are the 
times in which we live, and were it not for the distant 
vision of a Chimborazo with eternal sunshine over its 



93 

head, and eternal frost upon its brow, or of a neigh- 
bouring ^tna or Vesuvius bursting from time to time 
with subterranean fires, and pouring down from their 
summits floods of liquid lava, to spread ruin and de- 
struction over the vales below, elementary snows and 
. boiHng water-courses would be objects scarcely within 
the limits of human conception. At such times, ima- 
gination in her wildest vagaries can scarcely conceive 
the transformations of temper, the obliquities of intel- 
lect, the perversions of moral principle effected by 
junctures of high and general excitement. Many of 
you, gentlemen, have known the Republican plenipo- 
tentiary of whom I have here spoken, settled down 
into a plain Republican farmer of your own state, of 
placid humour, of peaceable demeanour, addicted to 
profound contemplation, passing a long life in philo- 
sophical retirement, devising ingenious mechanical in- 
ventions, far from all the successive convulsions of his 
native land, and closing a useful career as a citizen of 
this his adopted country. Who of you could imagine, 
that this was the same man, who at the period which I 
am recalling to your memory, was a Phaeton, grasping 
at the reins of the chariot of the Sun to set the world 
on fire. Who could imagine, that coming with words 
of liberty, equality, fraternity, of generous friendship 
and disinterested benevolence upon his lips, he had 
..; brought with him like Albaroni, a torch to set fire to 
all the mines. His correspondence with the govern- 
ment of Washington, is recorded upon the annals of 
our country. Our time will admit but of a transient 



m 

allusion to it. You remember the frank and dignified 
candour with which he was received bj Washington 
himself; the warm-hearted enthusiasm with which, 
as the representative of the new sister Repubhc, he 
was welcomed by the people ; and the wanton, las- : 
civious courtship of the faction opposed to Washing- 
ton — congenial spirits to the cannibals, then in the name 
of Democracy ruling in France — blistering him up into 
open defiance, and an appeal against Washington him- 
self, TO THE PEOPLE. 

His recall was at length demanded. His violence 
was turning the current of popular opinion here against 
his country. The party which had despatched him 
from France was annihilated. The heads of his pa- 
trons had passed under the edge of the guillotine. 
Their successors disavowed his conduct and recalled 
him. In self- vindication he published his histructions, 
disclosing the secrets both of monarchical and repub- 
lican France, dampers to the affectionate gratitude of 
the American people, and he renounced his country for 
ever. 

The party opposed to the administration of Wash- 
ington, saw nothing in France but the republic of lib- 
erty, equality, and fraternity. Like the mass of the 
French people themselves, they followed with obse- 
quious approbation every resolution by which an 
armed detachment of Democracy from the Fauxbourg 
Saint Antoine, swept away one set of rulers after 
another, and smothered them in their own blood. The 
Brissotine, the Dantonian, the Robespierrian factions 



95 

crowded eacli other to the guillotine with the fury of 
uncaged tigers, and the accession of a popular chief- 
tain to the summit of power was the signal of his pro- 
scription and murder by that national razor. At every 
exhibition of this horrid scene, the Parisian rabble 
shouted applause, and clapped their hands for joy — and 
every shout and every clapping of hands was re-echoed 
from these western shores of the Atlantic, by the opposi- 
tion to the administration of Washington. With this 
wilfully bhnd devotion to France, was necessarily asso- 
ciated, a bitter and mahgnant hatred of Britain ; in- 
flamed by the wrongs which she was inflicting upon 
our commerce and seamen, and ulcerated by the tone 
of her negotiator here in the discussion of the long 
standing mutual complaints, which he had yet not been 
authorized by his government to compromise or to 
settle. 

In the spring of the year 1794, the sixth year of 
Washington's administration, this congregating mass of 
evil humours was drawing to a head. The national 
feeling against Britain was irritated to the highest 
pitch of excitement. Resolutions looking and tending 
directly to war, . were introduced and pending in the 
House of Representatives of the United States, and 
that war in all human probability would have been 
fatal to the fame of Washington, and to the indepen- 
dence of the Union and the freedom of his country. 
At that moment he fixed his eyes, with calm and con- 
siderate firmness at once upon James M mroe, as a 
messenger of peace, of conciliation, and of friendship 



96 

to the Republic of France ; and upon John Jay, as an 
envoy extraordinary, bearer of the same disposition, 
and interpreter of the same spirit to Great Britain. 
They were despatched at the same time with in- 
structions concerted in one system, and diversified to 
meet the exigencies of the two respective missions. 

Mr. Monroe was at that time a member of the Sen- 
ate of the United States, from Virginia — a soldier of 
the Revolution, in the service of which he had passed 
from youth to manhood with distinguished honour. 
Personally attached to Washington, he had been a 
moderate opponent to the adoption of the Constitution, 
and although adverse to some of the leading measures 
of the administration, and partially favourable to the 
cause of France, the confidence of Washington in his 
abilities and in his personal integrity made his political 
propensities rather a recommendation, than an objection 
to his appointment. 

Mr. Jay was then Chief Justice of the United States, 
And how shall I dare to speak to YOU of a native of 
your own state, and one of the brightest ornaments not 
only of your state, but of his country, and of human 
nature. At the dawn of manhood he had been one of 
the delegates from the people of New York, at the first 
continental Congress of 1774. In the course of the 
Revolutionary War, he had been successively Presi- 
dent of Congress, one of their ministers in Europe — 
one of the negotiators of the preliminary and definitive 
treaties of peace, and Secretary of Foreign Affairs to 
the Confederation Congress, till the transition to the 



97 

constitutional government, and at the organization of the 
judicial tribunals of the Union, was placed with the unan- 
imous sanction of the public voice, at their head. With 
this thickening crowd of honours gathering around him 
as he trod the path of life, he possessed with a perfectly 
self-coh trolled ambition, a fervently pious, meek and qui- 
et, but firm and determined spirit. As one of the authors 
of the Federalist, and by official and personal influence as 
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and as a most respected citi- 
zen of New York, he had contributed essentially to the 
adoption of the Constitution: and his administration of 
the highly responsible office of chief justice, had given 
universal satisfaction to the friends of Washington's ad- 
ministration, and to all who desired the practical opera- 
tion of the Constitution conformably to the spirit in 
which it had been ordained by the people. He had no 
European partialities, and least of all for England ; but 
he was for dispensing equal justice to all mankind, and 
he felt the necessity of peace for the stability of the Con- 
stitution, and the preservation of the Union. 

His negotiation terminated in a treaty, the ratification 
of which brought on the severest trial, which the char- 
acter of Washington and the fortunes of our nation 
have ever passed through. No period of the war of 
independence, no other emergency of our history since 
its close, irot even the ordeal of establishing the Consti- 
tution of the United States itself, has convulsed to its 
inmost fibres, the political association of the North 
American people, with such excruciating agonies as 

the consummation and fulfilment of this great national 

13 



98 

composition of the conflicting rights, interests and pre- 
tensions of our country and of Great Britain. The par- 
ty strife in which it originated and to which it gave 
birth is not yet appeased. From this trial, Washington 
himself, his fame, the peace, union and prosperity of 
his country, have issued triumphant and secure. But 
it prepared the way for the reversal of some of the prin- 
ciples of his administration, and for the introduction of 
another and widely different system six years after, in 
the person of Thomas Jefferson. 

The treaty concluded by Mr. Jay, with the exception 
of one article, which the British government readily con- 
sented to rehnquish, was ratified. The peace, the 
union, the prosperity, the freedom of the nation, were 
secured; but revolutionary France, and the opposition 
to Washington's administration, were defeated, discon- 
certed, disabled, but not subdued. The rabble govern- 
ment of the fauxbourg St. Antoine w^as passing away. 
The atheism of the strumpet goddess of reason, had al- 
ready yielded to a solemn decree of the national Con- 
vention, proposed by Robespierre himself, in the name 
of the pec>ple of France, acknowledging — the existence 
of a God ! a w^orm of the dust, recognising as a co-ordi- 
nate power — the Creator of all worlds. The counter 
revolution had advanced a step further. A constitu \ 
tional republic, with a, legislature in two branches, and i 
plural executive, had succeeded to the despotism of a 
single assembly, with a jacobin club executive. France 
had now a five-headed executive Directory, and a new 
irnion of church and state, with a new theo-philanthropic 



0^ 

religion, halfway between simple Deism and Chris- 
tianity. And republican France had now another ele- 
ment in her composition. A youthful soldier by the 
name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who by the election of 
the whole people of France, with the help of his holi- 
ness the Pope, and the iron crown of Lombardy, was 
destined at no distant day to restore the Christian cal 
endar and Sabbath for the godless decimal division of 
time of Fab re d'Eglantine, and to ascend a double 
carpeted throne of emperor and king. Through all 
these varying phases of the French Revolution, the 
party opposed to Washington's administration still clung 
in affection and in policy to France, and when by the 
election of Mr. Jefferson as President of the United 
States, that party came into power, it was precisely the 
moment when Napoleon at the head of his brave gren- 
adiers had expelled the two legislative councils from 
their halls, had turned out the theo-philanthropic Direc- 
tory from their palace ; and under the very republican 
name of first of three consuls, was marching with fixed 
eye and steady step to the consulate for life, to the he- 
reditary imperial throne, and to the kingdom of the iron 
crown. To all those transmutations the pure republi- 
canism of Jefferson was to accommodate itself without 
blench and without discarding his partiality for France. 
Nor v/as it to fail of its rev^ard, in the acquisition of 
Louisiana— r a measure, not embraced or foreseen by the 
administration of Washington, accomplished by a fla- 
grant violation of the Constitution, but sanctioned by 
the acquiescence of the people, and if not eventually 



100 

leading to the dissolution of the Union, shaped by the 
healing: and beneficent hand of Providence from a 
portentous evil into a national blessing. 

The consequences of that revolution in our Union 
(for it vi^as nothing less) are not yet fully developed — 
far otherwise. But whether for v^^eal or wo — for the 
permanent aggrandizement, or the final ruin of our con- 
federated nation, it belongs to the memory of Jefferson, 
and not to that of Washington or his administration. 
Hitherto it has exhibited its fairest side. It has enlar- 
ged our borders and given us the whole valley of the 
Mississippi. The pernicious and corrupting example 
of an undissembled admitted prostration of the Con- 
stitution — the more concealed, but not less real dis- 
placement of the internal sectional balance of power 
— have not yet borne their fruits. Upon the open- 
ing of Pandora's box, Hope was left behind. Hith- 
erto no seed of deadly aconite has generated into 
pestilential poison. Let us rejoice at the past and hope 
for the future. But in leaving to the judgment of after- 
time, the ultimate decision of that which we see as yet 
but in part, and through a glass darkly, let us look back 
to the principles of Washington and his administration, 
and to the unbroken faith of the Constitution, for the 
source of that prosperity which no variation of seasons 
can wither, and that happiness which no reverse of for- 
tune can turn into bitter disappointment. 

The ratification of Mr. Jay's treaty was the establish- 
ment of justice in our national intercourse with Great 
Britain. But it was deeply resented by all the parties 



101 

which successively wielded the power of France. Vic- 
torious in the midst of all their internal convulsions 
over all the continent of Europe, they were unable 
to cope with the naval power of Britain upon the sea. 
Although Mr. Jay's treaty had expressly reserved 
all the obligations of the United States in previ- 
ously existing treaties with other nations ; France 
complained, that it had conceded the long-contested 
principle of protecting the cargo of an enemy with 
the flag of the friend — that it had enlarged the list of 
articles of contraband ; and even while claiming the ex- 
emption of provisions from that list, had by stipulating 
the payment for them when taken, admitted by impli- 
cation the right of taking them. A long and irritating 
discussion of these complaints ensued between the 
American Secretary of State, and the successive Plen- 
ipotentiaries of France, and between the French Min 
isters of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Monroe. The oppo 
sition to Washington's administration, strengthened by 
the unpopularity of Mr. Jay's treaty, had acquired an 
ascendancy in the House of Representatives ; counte- 
nanced and justified every reproach of France ; and 
made a persevering and desperate effort to refuse the 
means and the supplies for carrying the treaty into ex- 
ecution, even after it had been ratified. 

After a long and doubtful struggle, in the course of 
which the documents of the negotiation, called for by 
the House of Representatives, were refused by Wash- 
ington, the House by a bare majority voted the sup- 
plies. The treaty was carried faithfully into execu- 



109 

tion, and justice was established in the relations be- 
tween the United States and Great Britain. 

The last act of the confederation Congress had been 
to refer over to the new government the negotiations 
with Spain, especially for the free navigation of the 
Mississippi. These were immediately taken up, and 
transferred from the seat of government of the United 
States to Spain. Two commissioners were appointed 
to negotiate with the Spanish government at Madrid, 
who prepared the way for the treaty of San Lorenzo, 
concluded on the 27th of October, 1795, by Thomas 
Pinckney, Minister Plenipotentiary from the United 
States, and the Prince of the Peace, then the Minister 
of Spain for Foreign Affairs. This treaty secured to 
the people of the United States, the free navigation of 
the Mississippi, and a port of deposite at New Orleans ^ — 
and politically considered as a part of the comprehen- 
sive system of Washington's policy, was at once a se- 
quel to the treaty of 19th November, with Great Brit- 
ain, and a precursor to the treaty for the acquisition of 
Louisiana with France. 

In the accomplishment of these objects, the princi- 
pal agent of the nation had been the Executive power, 
vested in Washington as President of the United 
States. Bat the justice for the establishment of which 
the Constitution of the United States had been ordain- 
ed, was required at home as well as abroad, and for 
this it was the peculiar province of the Legislature to 
provide. 

The first attention due from that body w^as to the 



103 

public creditors of the country, and the first measure 
to be adopted was the raising of a revenue to satisfy 
their righteous claims. On the 8th of April, imme- 
diately after the organization of the two Houses, and 
before the President of the United States had been 
notified of his election, Mr. Madison introduced into 
the committee of the whole House of Representatives a 
proposition for levying duties of impost. The re- 
marks with which he submitted this proposal, so ex- 
plicitly indicative of this purpose of estabhshing jus- 
tice, that I cannot forbear to repeat the first sentences 
of them in his own words : — 

" I take the liberty, Mr. Chairman," said he, " at this 
early stage of the business, to introduce to the com- 
mittee a subject which appears to me to be of the great- 
est magnitude ; a subject. Sir, that requires our first at- 
tention, and our united exertions. 

" No gentleman here can be unacquainted with the 
numerous claims upon our justice ; nor with the impo- 
tency which prevented the late Congress of the United 
States, from carrying into effect the dictates of grati- 
tude and policy. 

^'The Union by the establishment of a more efifect- 
ive government, having recovered from the state of im- 
becility that heretofore prevented a performance of its 
duty, ought in its first act to revive those principles of 
honour and honesty, that have too long lain dormant. 

"The deficiency in our treasury has been too notorious 
to make it necessary for me to animadvert upon that 
subject Let us content ourselves with endeavouring 



104 

to remedy the evil. To do this, a national revenue 
must be obtained ; but the system must be such a one, 
that, while it secures the object of revenue, it shall not 
be oppressive to our constituents. Happy it is for us 
that such a. system is within our power; for I appre- 
hend, that both these objects may be obtained from an 
impost on articles imported into the United States." 

And thus was laid the foundation of the revenues of 
the Union ; and with them the means of pajdng their 
debts and of providing for their common defence and 
general w^elfare. The act of Congress framed upon 
this proposal, received the sanction of "Washington on 
the 4th of July, in the first year of his administration. 
It stands the second on the statute book of the United 
States, immediately after that which binds all the officers 
of the Union to the support of the Constitution, by the 
solemnities of an appeal to God, and declares in a brief 
preamble, the necessity of its enactment, "for the sup- 
port of government, for the discharge of the debts of 
the United States, and the encouragement and protec- 
tion of manufactures." 

With the act for laying duties of impost, there was 
associated another, imposing duties of tonnage on 
ships, in which to encourage the shipping and ship- 
building interest, a double discrimination was made be- 
tween ships built in the United States and belonging 
to their citizens, ships built in the United States, be- 
longing to foreigners, and ships foreign built and 
owned. The duty upon the first of these classes being 
six, on the second thirty, and on the third fifty cents a 



105 

ton. The same discriminating principle favourable to 
the navigation of the United States, was observed in 
every part of the Act for levying duties of impost. 

An Act for regulating the collection of these duties, 
wi\h the establishment of ports of entry and delivery, 
and for the appointment of officers of the customs through- 
out the United States : an Act for the establishment 
and support of light-houses, beacons, buoys, and pub- 
lic piers ; and an Act for regulating the coasting -trade, 
completed the system for raising a revenue. 

Thus the organization of the government, conforma- 
bly to the new constitution, and to give it practical 
operation, was eifected at the first session of the first 
Constitutional Congress, between the 4th of March, 
and the 29th of September, 1789. A comprehensive 
and efficient system of revenue — a graduation of judi- 
cial tribunals, inferior and supreme — the Departments 
of State, of the Treasury, and of War — a temporary 
establishment of the Post Office, provisions for the ne- 
ofotiation of treaties with the Indian tribes : for the 
adaptation to the new order of things, of the ordinance 
for the government of the northwestern Territory, and 
of the shadow of a military estabHshment then exist- 
ing ; for fixing the compensation of the President and 
Vice President, the members of Congress, and of all 
the officers of the United States, judicial and execu- 
tive — and for the payment of invalid pensions, were 
all effected within that time. Twelve Amendments to 
the Constitution, to serve as a substitute for the omis- 
sion of a Declaration of Rights, were agreed to by a 
14. 



106 



majority of two thirds of the members present of both 
Houses, and transmitted to the Legislatures of the sev- 
eral states — ten of those Amendments were adopted 
by three fourths of the state Legislatures, and became 
parts of the Constitution — only two other Amendments 
have since obtained the same sanction. An Act of ap- 
propriation for the service of the year 1789, amounting 
to six hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars, with 
twenty thousand more for negotiating Indian treaties, 
defrayed all the expenses of the year; and if com- 
pared with the thirty-six millions and upw^ard, appro- 
priated at the session of Congress recently expired, for 
the service of the year 1839, may give a pregnant ex- 
emplification in the science of political economy, of the 
contrast between the day of small things, and the pres- 
ent : an inversion of the microscope might present a 
comparison between the results of the former and the 
latter appropriations, not so much to the advantage of 
the present day. 

But at the close of the first session, there was yet 
much to be done for the establishment of justice at 
home and abroad. On the 29th of September, 1789, 
Congress adjourned, to meet again on the 4th of Jan- 
uary, 1790. That second session continued until the 
12th of August of that year. The institution of the 
Departments of State and of the Treasury, were 
among the latest acts of the first session, and on the 
11th of September, Alexander Hamilton had been ap- 
pointed Secretary of the Treasury ; and on the 26th of 
the same month, Thomas Jefferson was appointed Sec- 



107 

retary of State. Henry Knox, the Secretary of War 
to the confederation Congress when it expired, was re- 
appointed to the same office, adapted to the new Con- 
stitution. 

The Secretaries of State and of the Treasury, both 
possessing minds of the highest order of intellect; 
both animated with a lofty spirit of patriotism, both 
distinguished for pre-eminent services in the Revolu- 
tion — Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of In- 
dependence — Hamilton, almost entitled to be called 
jointly with Madison, the author of the Constitution 
itself, both spurred to the rov^els by rival and antag- 
onist ambition, were the representatives and leading 
champions of two widely different theories of govern 
ment. The Constitution itself v^as not altoo^ether sat- 
isfactory to either of those theories. Jefferson, bred 
from childhood to the search and contemplation of ab- 
stract rights, dwelling with a sort of parental partiality 
upon the self-evident truths of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, and heated by recent communion with the 
popular leaders and doctrines of revolutionary France, 
in the convulsive struggles to demolish her monarchy, 
had disapproved the Constitution for its supposed ten- 
dency to monarchy, and for its omission of a Declara- 
tion of Rights, and finally acquiesced in its adoption 
upon a promise of amendments. Hamilton, prompted 
by a natural temper aspiring to military renown — nur- 
tured to a spirit of subordination by distinguished mil- 
itary service in the Revolutionary War, and disgusted 
with the dishonest imbecility of the confederacy of 



lOB 

sovereign states, of which he had suffered the mortify- 
ing experience, had inclined to a government higher 
toned than that of the Constitution, to which he had 
however cheerfully acceded — -and which he had most ably 
advocated as the principal author of the Federalist, and 
in the state Convention of New York. But the whole 
drift and scope of his papers in the Federalist was direct- 
ed to sustain the position, that a government at least as 
energetic as that provided by the Constitution, was indis- 
pensable to the salvation of the Union — the inference 
is clearly deducible from this form of expression, and 
from the tenor of all his argument, that he believed a 
still stronger government necessary. His opinions 
thus inclined to the doctrine of implied powers ; and 
to a liberal construction of all the grants of power in 
the Constitution. These prepossessions, so discordant 
in themselves, and fortified on both sides with so much 
genius and talent, soon manifested themselves in the 
cabinet councils, with so much vehemence and perti- 
nacity, as made it impossible for Washington, as he 
designed, to hold an even balance between them. 

On the 21st of September, 1789, upon the report of 
a committee on a memorial 'and petition of certain of 
the public creditors in the state of Pennsylvania, two 
Resolutions were adopted by the House of Representa- 
tives, without debate or opposition. 

1. That this house consider an adequate provision for 
the support of public credit, as a matter of high im- 
portance to the national honour and prosperity. 

2. That the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to 



1Q9 

prepare a plan for that purpose, and to report the 

same to the House at its next meeting. 

Accordingly on the 14th of January, 1790, a plan 
for the support of public credit was reported by Mr. 
Hamilton to the House, and was followed by others 
proposing the establishment of a national bank and a 
mint ; and upon manufactures, with a review of the 
operation of the revenue, and collection and navigation 
Acts of the preceding session — all reports of consum- 
mate ability, and proposing measures for the restoration 
of the public credit, the funding of the public debt, and 
the management of the revenue, which were adopted 
by Congress almost without alteration, and constituted 
altogether a system for the fulfilment of the nation's 
obUgations, and the final discharge of the debt of the 
Revolution, which has been carried into complete ex- 
ecution, and immortalized the name of Hamilton, as a 
statesman of high and permanent reputation, and 
among the first financiers of his age. 

But in the consummation of these plans, questions 
of great difficulty, not only in politics but in morals, 
and questions not less controvertible of constitutional 
power, were necessarily involved. It is deeply to be 
lamented that the complete success of Mr. Hamilton's 
plans ; the restoration through them of the honour of 
the country, and the discharge to the last dollar of her 
debt, have not to this day definitively settled all these 
questions. In the long-protracted controversies which 
grew out of Mr. Hamilton's funding system, the efforts 
to discriminate between the public creditors of differ- 



110 

ent classes, the violent opposition to the assumption of 
the state debts, and the strain of strict construction, 
denying the power of Congress to establish a national 
bank, by the same party which afterward by Acts of 
Congress, purchased a foreign realm, with its people, 
governed them for years with the rod of Spanish colo- 
nial despotism, parcelled the land out in states, and 
admitted them all to the Union, were all as I believed 
morally and politically wrong. The discrimination be- 
tween the public creditors, and the assumption of the 
state debts, were questions which once settled could 
not again recur ; but the power of Congress to estab- 
lish a bank as a regulation of commerce, and append- 
age to the power of borrowing money and regulating its 
value, an instrument for the management of the re- 
vef^jls and for effecting the receipts and expenditures 
of the nation, has unfortunately become a foot-ball of 
contention between parties, and mingling itself with the 
baneful spirit of unlimited separate state sovereignty 
even now hangs as a dark cloud over the future destiny 
of the Union. That cloud will pass away. The advice- 
of empirics, administering the bane for the antidote, will 
give way to the surgery of sober reason ; and exemption 
from debt, and superfluity of revenue, shall no longer 
by the financiering economy of the executive head, 
be felt as a public calamity. 

The establishment of the funding system of Mr. Ham- 
ilton, and especially the incorporation of the bank, oper- 
ated like enchantment for the restoration of the public 
credit ; repaired the ruined fortunes of the public cred- 



Ill 

itors, and was equivalent to the creation of many mil- 
lions of capital, available for the encouragement of in- 
dustry and the active exertions of enterprise. His repu- 
tation rose proportionably in the pubhc estimation. But 
:^,his principles thus developed brought him in the cabi- 
net of Washington, immediately into conflict with those 
of the Secretary of State, and in the house of represent- 
atives, with those of Mr. Madison,his late friend and as- 
sociate in the composition of the Federalist, and in framing 
and erecting the admirable fabric of the Constitution. 
Mr. Madison was the intimate, confidential, and devoted 
friend of Mr. Jefferson, and the mutual influence of 
these two mighty minds upon each other, is a phenom- 
enon, like the invisible and mysterious movements of 
the magnet in the physical world, and in which the sa- 
gacity of the future historian may discover the solution 
of much of our national history not otherwise easily ac- 
countable. 

The system of strict construction of state rights, and 
of federative preponderance in the councils of the na- 
tion, become thus substitutes for the opposition to the 
Constitution itself, and elements of vehement opposition 
to the administration of Washington, of which the fund- 
ing system thenceforward formed a vital part. At the 
head of this opposition Mr. Jefferson was in the cabinet, 
and Mr. Madison in the house of representatives. 

This opposition soon assumed the shape of a rival 
system of administration, preparing for the advancement 
of Mr. Jefferson to the succession of the Presidency, and 
thoroughly organized to the accomplishment of that 



112 

purpose. It was conducted with more address, with 
more constant watchfuhiess of the fluctuations of public 
opinion, and more pliable self-accommodation to them 
than the administration itself It began with a studious 
and cautious preservation of deference to the character 
and reputation of Washington himself, never wholly aban- 
doned by Mr. Jefferson, always retained by Mr. Madison, 
but soon exchanged by some of their partisans in Congress 
for hostility ill-disguised, and by many of the public jour- 
nals and popular meetings, for the most furious assaults 
upon his reputation, and the most violent denuncia- 
tions, not only of his policy, but of his personal char- 
acter. 

Mr. Jefferson was in the meantime fortifying his own 
reputation, and raising himself in the estimation of his 
countrymen, by a series of reports to the President, and 
to both houses of Congress, upon weights and meas- 
ures, upon the fisheries, upon the commerce of the 
Mediterranean sea, upon the commercial intercourse 
with the European nations, and afterward by a corres- 
pondence with the ministers of Britain, and of France and 
of Spain, with an exhibition of genius, of learning, and 
of transcendant talent, certainly not inferior, perhaps 
surpassing that of Hamilton himself The tw^o sys- 
tems, however, were so radically incompatible with 
each other, that Washington was, after many painful 
efforts to reconcile them together, compelled reluctantly 
to choose between them. He decided in the main for 
that of Hamilton, and soon after the unanimous re-elec- 
tion of Washington to the Presidency, Mr. Jefferson re- 



ii3 

tired from the administration, to Monticello, and osten- 
sibly to private life. 

Within a year after ward^ Hamilton also I'etired, as did 
Washington himself at the close of his presidential term. 
He dechned a second re-election. The opposition to 
his administration, mider the auspices of Mr. Jefferson, 
had acquired a head, which in the course of four years 
more, might have broken it down, as it was broken 
down in the hands of his successor. 

When Solon, by the appointment of the people of 
Athens, had formed, and prevailed upon them to adopt 
a code of fundamental laws, the best that they would 
bear, he went into Voluntary banishment for ten years, 
to save his system from the batteries of rival statesmen 
working upon popular passions and prejudices excited 
against his person. In eight years of a turbulent and 
tempestuous administration, Washington had settled up- 
on firm foundations the practical execution of the Con- 
stitution of the United States. In the midst of the most 
appalling obstacles, through the bitterest internal dissen- 
sions, and the most formidable combinations of foreign 
antipathies and cabals, he had subdued all opposition to 
the Constitution itself; had averted all dangers of 
European war ; had redeemed the captive children of 
his country from Algiers; had reduced by chastisement 
and conciliated by kindness, the most hostile of the In- 
dian tribes ; had restored the credit of the nation, and 
redeemed their reputation of fidelity to the performance 
of their obligations ; had provided for the total extin- 
guishment of the public debt ; had settled the Union 

15 



114 

upon the immovable foundation of principle, and had 
drawn around his head for the admiration and emula- 
tion of after times, a brighter blaze of glory than had 
ever encircled the brov^s of hero or statesman, patriot 
or sage. 

The administration of Washington fixed the charac- 
ter of the Constitution of the United States, as a prac- 
tical system of government, which it retains to this 
day. Upon his retirement, its great antagonist, Mr. 
Jefferson, came into the government again, as Vice 
President of the United States, and four years after, 
succeeded to the Presidency itself But the funding 
system and the bank were established. The peace 
with both the great belligerant powers of Europe was 
secured. The disuniting doctrines of unlimited sep- 
arate state sovereignty were laid aside. Louisiana, by 
a stretch of power in Congress, far beyond the highest 
tone of Hamilton, was annexed to the Union — and 
although dry-docks, and gun-boats, and embargoes, and 
commercial restrictions, still refused the protection of 
the national arm to commerce, and although an over- 
weening love of peace, and a reliance upon reason as 
a weapon of defence against foreign aggression, even- 
tuated in a disastrous though glorious war with the 
gigantic power of Britain, the Constitution as construed 
by Washington, still proved an effective government 
for the country. 

And such it has still proved, through every succes- 
sive change of administration it has undergone. Of 
these, it becomes not me to speak in detail. Nor were 



/15 



it possible, without too great a trespass upon your time. 
The example of Washington, of retiring from the 
Presidency after a double term of four years, was fol- 
lowed by Mr. Jefferson, against the urgent solicitations 
of several state Legislatures. Tl}is second example of 
voluntary self-chastened ambition, by the decided ap- 
probation of public opinion, has been held obligatory 
upon their successors, and has become a tacit subsi 
diary Constitutional law. If not entirely satisfactory 
to t he nation, it is rather by its admitting one re-elec- 
tion, than by its interdicting a second. Every change 
of a President of the United States, has exhibited 
some variety of policy from that of his predecessor. 
In more than one case, the change has extended to po- 
litical and even to moral principle ; but the policy of 
the country has been fashioned far more by the in- 
fluences of public opinion, and the prevailing humours 
in the two Houses of Congress, than by the judgment, 
the will, or the principles of the President of the 
United States. The President himself is no more than 
a representative of public opinion at the time of his 
election ; and as public opinion is subject to great and 
frequent fluctuations, he must accommodate his policy 
to them; or the people will speedily give him a succes- 
sor; or either House of Congress will effectually con- 
trol his power. It is thus, and in no other sense that 
the Constitution of the United States is democratic — 
for the government of our country, instead of a Dem- 
ocracy the most simple, is the most complicated gov- 
ernment on the face of the globe. From the immense 



116 



extent of our territory, the difference of manners, hab 
its, opinions, and above all, the clashing interests of the 
North, South, East, and West, public opinion formed by 
the combination of numerous aggregates, becomes it- 
self a problem of compound arithmetic, which nothing 
but the result of the popular elections can solve. 

It has been my purpose, Fellow-Citizens, in this dis- 
course to show : ~ 

1. That this Union was formed by a spontaneous 
movement of tJie people of thirteen English Colonies ; 
all subjects of the King of Great Britain— bound to 
him in allegiance, and to the British empire as their 
country, That the first object of this Union, was 
united, resistance against oppression, and to obtain 
from the government of their country redress of their 
wrongs. 

2. That failing in this object, their petitions having 
been spurned, and the oppressions of which they com- 
plained, aggravated beyond endurance, their Delegates 
in Congress, in their name and hy their authority, issued 
the Declaration of Independence — proclaiming them 
to the world as one people, absolving them from their 
ties and oaths of allegiance to their king and country — ■ 
renouncing that country ; declaring the UNITED Col- 
onies, Independent States, and announcing that this 
ONE PEOPLE of thirteen united independent states, 
by that act, assumed among the powers ot the earth, 
that separate and equal station to which the laws of 
nature and of nature's God entitled them. 

3. That in justification of themselves for this act of 



117 



transcendent power, they proclaimed the principles upon 
which they held all lawful government upon earth to be 
founded — which principles were, the natural, unaliena- 
ble, imprescriptible rights of man, specifying among 
them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — that 
the institution of government is to secure to men in so- 
ciety the possession of those rights : that the institution, 
dissolution, and reinstitution of government, belong 
exclusively to THE PEOPLE under a moral respon- 
sibility to the Supreme Ruler of the universe ; and that 
all the just powers of government are derived from the 
consent of the governed. 

4. That under this proclamation of principles, the dis- 
solution of allegiance to the British king, and the com- 
patriot connection with the people of the British empire, 
were accomplished; and the one ^people of the United 
States of America, became one separate sovereign inde- 
pendent power, assuming an equal station among the 
nations of the earth. 

5. That this one people did not immediately institute 
a government for themselves. But instead of it, their 
delegates in Congress, by authority from their separate 
state leorislatures, without voice or consultation of the 
people, instituted a mere confederacy. 

6. That this confederacy totally departed from the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence, and sub- 
stituted instead of the constituent power of the people, 
an assumed sovereignty of each separate state, as the 
source of all its authority. 

7. That as a primitive source of power, this separate 



118 



state sovereignty, was not only a departure from the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence, but di- 
rectly contrary to, and utterly incompatible with them. 

8. That the tree was made known by its fruits. That 
after live years wasted in its preparation, the confed- 
eracy dragged out a miserable existence of eight years 
•more, and expired like a candle in the socket, having 
brought the union itself to the verge of dissolution. 

9. That the Constitution of the United States w^as a 
return to the principles of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and the exclusive constituent power of the people. 
That it was the work of the ONE PEOPLE of the 
United States ; and that those United States, though 
doubled in numbers, still constitute as a nation, but ONE 
PEOPLE. 

10. That this Constitution, making due allowance for 
the imperfections and errors incident to all human 
affairs, has under all the vicissitudes and changes of 
w^ar and peace, been administered upon those same 
principles, during a career of fifty years. 

11. That its fruits have been, still making allowance 
for human imperfection, a more perfect union, establish- 
ed justice, domestic tranquility, provision for the com- 
mon defence, promotion of the general welfare, and the 
enjoyment of the blessings of liberty by the constituent 
'peo'ple, and their posterity to the present day. 

And now the future is all before us, and Providence 
our guide. 

"When the children of Israel, after forty years of wan- 
derings in the wilderness, w^ere about to enter upon 



119 

the promised land, their leader, Moses, who was not per- 
mitted to cross the Jordan with them, just before his re- 
moval from among them, commanded that when the 
Lord their God should have brought them into the land, 
they should put the curse upon Mount Ebal, and the 
blessing upon Mount Gerizim. This injunction was 
faithfully fulfilled by his successor Joshua. Immedi- 
ately after they had taken possession of the land, Joshua 
built an altar to the Lord, of whole stones, upon Mount 
Ebal. And there he wrote upon the stones a copy of 
the law of Moses, which he had written in the presence 
of the children of Israel: and all Israel, and their 
elders and officers, and their judges, stood on the two 
sides of the ark of the covenant, borne by the priests 
and Levites, six tribes over against Mount Gerizim, and 
six over against Mount Ebal. And he read all the 
words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according 
to all that was written in the book of the law. 

Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Dec- 
laration of Independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the 
confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your 
Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. 
In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity, narra- 
ted in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronoun- 
ced against the people, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing 
promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your pos- 
terity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their ad- 
herence to, or departure from, the principles of the 
Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven in 
the Constitution of the United States. Lay up these prin- 



120 



ciples, then, in your hearts, and in your souls — bind 
them for signs upon your hands, that they maybe as front- 
lets between your eyes — teach them to your children, 
speaking of them when sitting in your houses, when 
walking by the way, when lying down and when rising 
up — write them upon the doorplates of your houses, 
and upon your gates — cling to them as to the issues 
of life — adhere to them as to the cords of your eternal 
salvation. So may your children's children at the next 
return of this day of jubilee, after a full century of ex- 
perience under your national Constitution, celebrate 
it again in the full enjoyment of all the blessings recog- 
nised by you in the commemoration of this day, and of 
all the blessings promised to the children of Israel upon 
Mount Gerizim, as the reward of obedience to the law 
of God. 



y)f^ya^ynj/^->^ 



THE CELEBRATION. 



*♦ . 



THE CELEBRATION. 



The semi-centennial anniversary of the first inauguration of George 
Washington, as President of the tfnited States, and the organization of 
the general government under the Federal Constitution, was celebrated 
in the city of New York, on Tuesday, April 30th, 1839, by a public Ora- 
tion and Dinner, under the direction of a committee of the New York 
Historical Society. 

The Honorable John ^uincy Adams, the sixth President of the Uni- 
ted States, was selected as the Orator on this interesting occasion ; and 
letters of invitation were addressed to distinguished survivors of the Rev- 
olutionary period, to the Historical Societies of other states, and to vari- 
ous public functionaries, requesting their attendance. 

Mr. Adams, having accepted the appointment, arrived in town from 
Washington on Monday, April 29th, and in the evening met a large 
number of the members of the Society at their rooms in the Stuyvesant 
Institute. From thence the company repaired by invitation to the house 
of Mr. Stuyvesant, the President of the Society, where a sumptuous en- 
tertainment was provided for the occasion. 

On Tuesday, at eleven o'clock, A. M., the Society with their guests as- 
sembled at the City Hotel, where a large number of citizens joined them 
in paying their personal respects to the venerable Orator of the day, and 
to the Revolutionary veterans, who, disregarding the infirmities of age, 
had once more rallied in honour of their beloved Chief. Among the guests 
were Colonel John Trumbull, General Morgan Lewis, Mr. Justice 
Thompson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, His Excellency 
William Pennington, Governor of New Jersey, Hon. Samuel L. South- 
ard, of the United States Senate, Major-General Winfield Scott, and 
Suite, of the U. S. Army, Commodore Alexander Ciaxton, of the tj. S. 
Navy, Hon. John Davis, Judge of the U. S. District Court for Massa- 
chusetts, Baron de Roenne, late Charge d' Affaires for Prussia, Hon. 
William A. Duer, President of Columbia College, Messrs. Albert Smith, 
Member of Congress, of Maine, Nathan Appleton, late M. C, of Boston, 
William S. Hastings, M. C, of Massachusetts, Daniel D. Barnard, M. 
C, of Albany, Elisha Whittlesey, M. C, of Ohio, John Howland, Esq., 
President of the Rhode Island Historical Society, William Willis, Esq., 
of the Maine Historical Society, Jacob B. Moore, Esq., of the New 
Hampshire Historical Society, and others. 

At twelve o'clock, the company moved in procession to the Middle 
Dutch church, in Cedar street, where an immense concourse of people 
were assembled, comprising much of the beauty and fashion of the city, 
besides many distinguished strangers. Tickets having been issued for 
admission to the church, to prevent the confusion of a crowd greater than 
could be provided with seats, many hundreds of persons were necessarily 
excluded who sought to be present. A temporary stage was erected in 
front of the pulpit for the convenience of the guests, on which was placed 
the identical chair which had been occupied by General Washington at 
the time of his inauguration. This chair was now taken by the distin- 
guished Orator of the day, who was supported on his right by Peter Gerard 
Stuyvesant, Esq., the President of the New York Historical Society, 
and on his left by Philip Hone, Esq., one of the Vice Presidents. The 



124 

members of the Society, and the delegates from the Historical Societies 
of other states, occupied the central seats in the body of house, which 
were reserved for their use. 

The delivery of the Oration was preceded by a fervent and appropri- 
ate prayer from the Rev. John Knox, D. D., one of the associate pastors 
of the Dutch Collegiate church. The following Ode, written for the oc- 
casion by William Cullen Bryant, Esq., was tlien sung : — 

Great were the hearts, and strong ihe minds, 

Of those who framed, in high debate, 
The immortal league of love that binds 

Our fair broad empire, state with state. 

And ever hallowed be the hour, 

When, as the auspicious task was done, 
A nation's gift, the sword of power. 

Was given to glory's unspoiled son. 

That noble race is gone; the suns 

Of fifty years have risen and set ; 
The holy links those mighty ones 

Had forged and knit, are brighter yet. 

Wide — as our own free race increase — 

Wide shall it stretch tlie elastic chain, 
And bind, in everlasting peace. 

State after state, a mighty train. 

The Oration occupied about two hours in the delivery, and, by the ex- 
traordinary ability, learning and eloquence which it displayed, fully sus- 
tained the most sanguine anticipations of the friends of the distinguish- 
ed Orator. The exercises were concluded with a prayer and benedic- 
tion from the Rev. J. M. Wainwright, D. D., one of the Ministers of 
Trinity church. 

At six o'clock, P. M., the company re-assembled at the City Hotel, and 
about two hundred persons sat down to a dinner prepared in the best 
style of that well-known establishment. Peter G. Stuyvesant, Esq., pre- 
sided on the occasion, assisted by Philip Hone, Esq., Hon. Judge Betts, 
of the U. S. District Court, and Charles King, Esq. The arrangements 
which were made under the efficient direction of the committee for that 
purpose, were happily carried into effect, and the whole evening exhibit- 
ed a continued scene of festive enjoyment, enlivened by music from a 
band in the orchestra, and a select corps of professional vocal performers, 
accompanied by the piano forte, and led by the celebrated Mr. Sinclair, 
of the Theatre. 

After the removal of the cloth, the following toasts were proposed by 
the President: — 

1. George Washington— Kis example was perfect : severe will be the condemna- 
tion of him, who seeks his place and disregards the authority of that example. 

Mr. Stuyvesant accompanied this toast with some remarks, containing 
interesting allusions to the private habits and character of General Wash- 
ington, in substance as follows : — 

In cannot be expected, at this time and place, any allusion should be 
made to the public character of Washington ; we are all in possession 
of his history from the dawn of life to the day that Mount Vernon was 
wrapped in sable; and after the exercises of this morning, if any attempt 
to portray his political or military life was made, it would only be the 
glimmering light of a feeble star succeeding the rays of a meridian sun. 

But the occasion affords an opportunity of congratulating the small 
number of gentlemen present, who enjoyed the privilege of participating 
in the ceremonies of the thirtieth of April, 1789 ; they will recall to their 



125 

memories the spontaneous effusions of joy that pervaded the breasts of 
the people, who, on that occasion, witnessed the organization of a consti- 
tutional government formed by mtelligent freemen, and consummated by 
placing at its head the man in whom their affections were concentrated 
as the father of their country. 

Washington's residence in this city after his inauguration was limited to 
about two years. His deportment in life was not plain, nor was it at all 
pompous, for no man was more devoid of ostentation than himself; his 
style, however, gave universal satisfaction to all classes in the communi- 
ty ; and, his historian has informed us, was not adopted for personal grat- 
ification, but from a devotion to his country-s welfare. Possessing a de- 
sirable stature, an erect frame, and, superadded, a lofty and sublime coun- 
tenance, he never appeared in public without arresting the reverence and 
admiration of the beholder ; and the stranger who had never before seen 
him, was at the first impression convinced it was tne President who de- 
lighted him. 

He seldom walked in the street — his public recreation was in riding. 
When accompanied by Mrs. Washington, he rode in a carriage drawn by 
six horses, with two outriders who wore rich livery, cocked hats, with 
cockades and powder. When he rode on horseback, he was joined by 
one or more of the gentlemen of his family, and attended by his outriders. 
He always attended divine service on Sundays ; his carriage on those 
occasions contained Mrs. Washington and himself, with one or both of 
their grand-children, and was drawn by two horses, with two footmen 
behind ; it was succeeded by a post-chaise, accommodating two gentlemen 
of his household. On his arrival in the city, the only residence that 
could be procured was a house in Cherry street, long known as the man- 
sion of the Franklin family, but in a short time afterward he removed to 
and occupied the house in Broadway, now Bunker's hotel. 

Washington held a levee once a week, and from what is now recollect- 
ed they were generally well attended, but confined to men in public life 
and gentlemen of leisure, for at that day it would have been thought 
a breach of decorum to visit the President of the United States in dis- 
habille. 

The arrival of Washington in 1789, to assume the reins of government, 
was not his first entry into this city, accompanied with honour to himself 
and glory to this country. This was on the twenty-fourth of November, 
]773; and here again I must observe, the number present who witnessed 
the ceremonies of that day, must, indeed, be very limited ; on that day 
he made his triumphal entry, not to sway the sceptre, but to lay down 
his sword ; not for personal aggrandizement, but to secure the happiness 
of his countrymen. He early in the morning left Harlem and entered 
the city through what is now called the Bowery ; he was escorted by 
cavalry and infantry, and a large concourse of citizens on horseback and 
on foot in plain dress ; the latter must have been an interesting sight to 
those of mature age wno were capable of comprehending their merit. In 
their ranks were seen men with patched elbows, odd buttons on their 
coats, and unmatched buckles in their shoes ; they were not indeed Fal- 
staff's company of scare-crows, but the most respectable citizens, who 
had been in exile and endured privations we know not of, for seven long 
and tedious years. 

On that occasion, and on nis arrival in 1789, Washington was received 
as is well known, by the elder Clinton, who was at both periods Govern- 
or of the state. 

%. The Day we celebrate— It witnessed the commencement of our government. 
May ihe day be far removed which dawns upon its dissolution. 

The next toast was preceded by the following observations from the 
President : — 



126 

Tn calling your attention to the toast next in order, I have a duty to 
perform, highly gratifying to nny inclination ; but 1 cannot conceal the 
embarrassixient I feel IVom my inability to do justice to the subject. I 
have to propose the health of a gentleman of extraordinary merit and 
fame— One of America's most distinguished sons. The Civilian, the 
Legislator, the Statesman, and the Scholar. A gentleman unexcelled in 
general attainments — exercising a mind in ev^ery department of science to 
advance the comfort and happiness of mankind. Possessing and advo- 
cating morals of the highest order. A gentleman who has this day so 
signally honoured us, and honoured our city; and in the various legisla- 
tive, executive, and diplomatic stations he has filled for nearly fifty years, 
has honoured our country at home and abroad. 
He then gave — 

The Orator of the Day— 

Justum et tenaeem propositi virum 
Non civium ardor prava jubentium, 
Non vultus instantis tyranni 
Mente quatit solida. 

Mr. Adams theti said : — 
Mr. Pres[dent-^ 

After the large draughts which I have already been this day permitted 
lo make upon the patience and indulgence of the company here present, 
and others of my fellow-cjtizens, inhabitants of this city, were I not other- 
wise at a loss for words to express emotions excited by this fresh tes- 
timonial of their kindness, it would best become me perhaps to receive it 
in silence — [go on ! go on ! from several voices at the table] — especially 
as, by consuming any portion of the time of this company, I am con- 
scious of withholding from them some part of the rich treat of entertain- 
ment, which they are justly expecting from othars whom I see at this 
table, far better qualified to discourse to them upon any topic than myself. 
1 cannot, however, forbear from the utterance of the grateful sentiment 
swelling in my bosom for your kindness at this moment, as well as that 
with which I have been honoured this morning; and with deep sensibil- 
ity to the friendly regard manifested in the personal reference of the sen- 
;timent just given from the chair, I submit a few remarks upon a period 
intimately connected with, but preceding that of your commemoration. 

The d.^y of this celebration is that upon which the people of the Uni- 
ted States began their career of history under a constitution of gov- 
ernment. 

They have had fifty years of experience of that government, and the 
review which you hav.e proposed to take as appropriate on this day, has 
been chiefly confined to the character of the Constitution and government, 
as it has prpved upon trial by experience. 

What it was in theory, properly belongs to the consideration of a pre- 
ceding period of tinie, of which, tn the discourse pronounced at your in- 
vitation, only incidental notice ^puld be taken, as in the historical chain 
of events leading to that which it was your special purpose to commem- 
orate. 

That preceding period, however, of our national history, from the ori- 
gin, formation, and progress of our Union to its consummation, in the es- 
tablishmegt of a national government, is full of a deep and abiding inter- 
est ; — nor can it be forgotten in the estimate of the blessings which we 
have enjoyed under the practical operation of the Constitution. It has 
been enjoined upon us )iot to sav what is the cause that the former days 
were better than these; and, thanks to this Constitution, we have abun- 
dant reason, with grateful acknowledgments, to allow that these days, 
with regard at least to our condition and prospects, are better — far better 
. — than the former days, whether of colonial depeadaiice, of revolutionary 



127 

Conflict, or of disunited and disuniting confederation. With reference to 
benefits and comforts enjoyed, these are the halcyon days of our exist- 
ence ; as we or our children will soon in sharp and bitter contrast feel, if 
we or they should ever betray, renounce, or abandon the self-evident prin- 
ciples upon which our Union was formed, our Independence declared, and 
our Constitution established, by our forefathers of former days* 

Our days of enjoyment are better than theirs. But our days of enjoy- 
ment are the frUits of their days of toil — of danger — of suffering— of lofty 
and generous exertion; — and can I choose but be reminded of them, when 
I see at your side [General Morgan Lewis was seated next to the Presi- 
dent,] and at mine, [Colonel John Trumbull,] relics of those trying times, 
conspicuous as actors in the drama of those days, and still worthy repre- 
sentatives of them? And must we not confess, that if these are the bet- 
ter days for enjoyment, those were the better days for illustrious action ? 

There were periods, Mr. President, in the history of ancient Greece, 
with which we may trace a closely corresponding analogy in our own. 
We must make allowances for the difference of times and circumstances, 
mannerSj opinions, and passions, between ages so remote, and our own, 
and for the necessary varieties of fabulous and authentic history. But in 
the ancient history of Greece^ there were two classes of events, and of 
human actors in the transactions of their respective times. The first of 
these periods was in later times usuallv denominated the heroic age^ 
and it acquired that appellation by llie supposed superiority of the men 
who, durmg that stage of human civilization, made themselves conspic- 
uous among their contemporaries by qualities or achievements superior 
to those possessed or accomplished by the rest. Those qualities and 
achievements were themselves of two very different kinds; one charac- 
terized by the exercise of physical force upon external nature and upon 
men — the other by the development of moral and intellectual powers. 
The renown of the hero was sometimes acquired by the extermination of 
monsters, such as the Nemean lion, or the Minotaur, and the destruction 
of tyrants and other wild beasts in human form, and sometimes by al- 
luring mankind to congregate together in civil associations, and by found- 
ing institutions of government to last through long successions of time. 
The fame of heroism was very rarely attained by the same person for 
successful energy in both these courses of action ; yet was it not entirely 
without example, and Plutarch has recorded, in the life of Theseus, one 
personage equally celebrated for both kinds of heroism, by ridding the 
earth of monsters, and by laying the foundations of the political consti- 
tution of Athens. 

May we not award the same meed of glory to our own Washington i 
As the commander-in-chief of our armies from the beginning to the 
close of the War of Independence, he sustained the cause of his country 
in the rough encounter of physical force — exterminated the monster— he 
destroyed not the person, but the power of the tyrant, and then retiring 
from the ardent gaze of an admiring world to the obscurity of rural sol- 
itude and domestic privacy, reissued from it again at the call of his coun- 
try in her utmost need, to preside at the formation of the people's Con- 
stitution, and to breathe into it the breath of life, by an administration 
shaping its character for the duration of ages, as the man of mature life 
is formed by the education of the child; 

It was a common opinion of the ancient Greeks of the la.ter times, that 
they had degenerated from the physical powers of their forefathers in the 
heroic age. One of the heroes of the Iliad is represented in that poem,^ 
while engaged in mortal combat with his enemy, as lifting and hurling 
at him a rock of such weight, that the poet declares, twelve men of his 
own time would not be able to raise it from the ground. In his second 
qualification of heroism, that which properly belongs to the cultivation of 



128 

the mind, and the formation of government, have we not too much reason 
to inquire whether the parallel of diminished power is not applicable to 
the progress of our own history ? If it be so, we have at least the con- 
solation that we diminish only in one of the scales of heroism; for when 
I reflect upon the achievements of our most recent conflict with the 
British Lion; and when I see at this table the representatives of our 
present army and navy [General Scott and Captain Claxton were at the 
table] I am sure every heart in this hall will respond to the declaration 
which rises from the heart to the lips. No ! in the prowess of the arm, 
and the valour of the soul, we have not degenerated from the energy of 
our forefathers. 

But it was also an opinion of antiquity that heroic achievement was 
not of itself sufficient for the attainment of glory, but that it required the 
assistance of literature and the fine arts for its illustration. There was, 
says the Roman master of the lyre, Horace, many a hero before the days 
of Agamemnon : but they and their mighty deeds have all perished, be- 
cause they had no poet to immortalize them in song. 

But if the heroic age of our revolutionary history has not yet been cel- 
ebrated in poetry with a dignity suitable to the grandeur of the subject, 
the sister art of painting has not been equally neglectful of her duty. 
My old and venerable friend at my side, [Col. Trumbull,] as you have 
all seen, has given a second life to the most affecting and grandest scenes 
of the Revolutionary war, in which he was himself in the prime of life 
a distinguished actor. In traversing the seas, his soul was still untravel- 
led, and the enthusiasm for his art never quenched the fire of his patriot- 
ism, even when it consigned him to a British prison. The merit of his 
pamtings has stood and will stand the test of time. But the conception 
of the design, the choice of the subjects, the perseverance of purpose, 
and the fidelity of execution, exhibiting to posterity striking resemblances 
from the life of the principal actors in those scenes which will expand 
in the memory of mankind, as the wheels of time roll round, all these 
will be better appreciated in another hundred years than they have been, 
or yet are. And yet, even now, who is there with an American heart in 
his bosom, who can cast his eye upon tnese martyrs to their country's 
cause, upon that self-devotion sanctified by the sacrifices of life, of War- 
ren at Bunker's Hill, and of Montgomery before the walls of Quebec — 
who can pass through the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, and 
not find his eyes involuntarily drawn upon the living triumphs of Sara- 
toga, and of Yorktown? upon that Declaration of Independence which 
forms an epoch in the history of the human race ? upon that scene of 
still loftier sublimity, if possible, the surrender by Washington of his 
commission to the Congress of Annapolis ? who can now turn his eye 
upon these visions of his country's glory, without feeling that the artist 
has spread a fresh blaze of splendour over those scenes ? for every eye 
that beholds them identifies the immortality of his own name with the 
imperishable honours of his country. 

Sir, I will detain the company no longer, but conclude with asking 
your permission to give in return for the toast with which they have been 
pleased to honour me, 

" The heroic age of American history." 

4. The Fourth of July, 1776, and the Thirtieth of April, 1789— The corner-stone 
and coping of a glorious edifice, which it is the duty of the present and future gener- 
ations to preserve free from desecration. 

5. The Union of the States— The cement of national independence : its mgredients 
— patriotism, justice, and liberality. 

6. "TTie Unity of 6rove7*nmenf"— As Washmgton understood it: "The support of 
tranquility at home, and of peace abroad— of our safety— of our prosperity — of that 
very liberty which we so highly prize." 



i 



129 

7. The President of the United States. 

8. The Constitution— 'Thti country has flourished under its protection: May it with 
filial gratitude cherish and sustain it in all its original strength and purity. 

9. The Congress of 1769— It gave the first practical construction to the Constitu- 
tion : May its successors emulate its profound sagacity and devoted patriotism. 

10. T^e Federal Judiciary — May its members always bear in mind that they are 
successors to Jay, Ellsworth, and Marshall. 

The Vice President, Mr. Philip Hone, expressed his thanks to the 
P»-esident for having called upon him to perform the agreeable duty of an- 
nouncing the eleventh regular toast. 

i am satisfied, (he said,) in paying ray humble tribute of respect to the 
brave man, on whose patriotic devotion to the services of the country re- 
liance can at all times be placed, and whose duties have been so faithfully 
performed, under the disadvantages of an extended sphere of action, with 
frequently incompetent means ; but I am warmed into admiration of the 
gallant band, and feel sensible of the obligation, which as citizens we owe 
theni for the defence of our political rights, and the protection of our per- 
sonal privileges, when I see before me the noble relics of the army of the 
Revolution, mingling in pleasant communion with the gallant spirits of 
more recent warfare ; when I perceive you, sir, supported on one the side by 
a veteran, the former aide of the father of the country, to whose patriotic 
services allusion has been made by the eloquent orator of the day, ( him- 
self deeply imbued with the spirit of the Revolution,) and the venerable 
gentleman, who, fifty years ago, in the prime of his life, admired then, as 
he is respected now. commanded the escortof Washington on the memor- 
able occasion which we are now employed in celebrating; and on thcv 
other, by the gallant officer to whose more recent services the country 
stands deeply indebted, and is willing to make grateful acknowledgment. 
Two generations of patriots, touching, as it were, upon each other, and 
rejoicing together. Sires, who sat a noble example in the arduous strug- 
gle for national independence, and a worthy son, who has faithfully fol- 
lowed their example, and emulated their virtue. 

In alluding to the distinguished officer who now commands the military 
section of which the state of New York forms a part, I avail myself with 
pleasure of the opportunity on the present occasion, (which his recent 
refusal to accept the hospitality of our city denied to myself, or some other 
more competent of my fellow-citizens,) to pay a willing tribute of applause 
to his unwearied exertion in defending the honour, and preserving the 
peace of the country. 

In performing this duty, however, I fear I may be led, notwithstanding 
the protestations which have been so frequently made in the course of this 
day's proceedings, of attachment to the federal principle of inviolable 
union amongst the several states, to dispute the claim of the patriotic 
state of Virginia to the honour of his paternity, or at least to insist upon 
an equal participation. A Virginian by birth, he has been brought up in 
the state of New York. It was here that his maiden sword was first 
drawn in the defence of his country, here the laurels were gathered which 
first graced his youthful brow, and here his military character was formed, 
and his tactics brought into successful operation. 

General Scott's sphere of action has been singularly extensive. Called 
upon at an early period of the late war with Great Britain, when from un- 
toward circumstances, (of which perhaps a want of proper preparation 
was one of the most prevailing,) darkness overspread our beloved land, and 
patriots began to tremble, he was one of those noble spirits, whose glorious 
privilege it was to " pluck up drowning honour by the locks." Young, ar- 
dent, and chivalric, he rushed at the head of his untried battalions into the 
fearful contest with the chivalry of England ; fearless of danger himself, 
he taught his countrymen that the conquerors of Europe might be success- 

17 



130 

fully opposed by American valour. The circumstances of the time com- 
ing in aid of his own prowess, gained for him a military reputation which, 
in most cases, it is the labour of a whole life to acquire. And on the Ni- 
agara frontier, his 'good sword ' carved out for him a title to the conspicu- 
ous place which we are all willing to award him in the proud array of 
American heroes. 

Subsequently to the peace with England, he has been steadily and ac- 
tively engaged in the duties of his profession, combining the fruits of his 
experience with the results of his studies in the art of war, into a system 
of tactics for the government of the army, and applying his knowledge to 
the defence of the exposed points within the compass of his command, the 
government has on all occasions acknowledged the value of his services. 

When the hostile movements of the Indian tribes on the North 
Western frontier, demanded prompt and efficient action, General Scott 
was appointed to the command of the army sent against them. And on 
this occasion his bravery and skill are not more entitled to praise, than the 
humanity he displayed toward his dispirited soldiers suffering under 
the dreadful effects of the pestilence which raged in their ranks. 

At a later period he has been engaged with eminent success in impor- 
tant duties of a nature somewhat foreign to his profession ; by skilful and 
judicious measures he succeeded m carrying out the design of the govern- 
ment in the peaceful removal of the Cherokees to the place of their allot- 
ted abode, and there is reason to believe that the sudden termination of 
his command in Florida, alone prevented a more favorable result of the 
disastrous warfare which has so long desolated that fair portion of our 
national domain. 

On the return of General Scott from the south, the i^prehensible inter- 
ference of some of our citizens on the northern frontier in the unnappy re- 
volt of the adjoining province of Canada, calling for the interposition of the 
government, he was sent to enforce obedience to the laws, and by the 
weight of his character, in the neighbourhood of his early achievements, he 
soon succeeded, with the aid of his gallant coadjutor Colonel Worth, in 
preserving the neutrality of the country. 

Hardly had this important duty been accomplished, when, on the ap- 
pearance of the late alarming collision between the authorities of the state 
of Maine, and the British province of New Brunswick, this warrior, trans- 
formed into the more benignant character of a peace-maker, was employed 
once more to allay the strife of offended pride, and avert the consequences of 
irresponsible hostility. Here again a judicious course of dignified firmness, 
tempered by courteous forbearance, produced a result calculated to quiet the 
apprehensions of the timid, and satisfy the demands of the aggrieved. 

In the discharge of all these multifarious services, General Scott has 
been unremittingly and laboriously engaged, in season and out of season, 
and is well entitled to count upon the approbation of his government, and 
the gratitude of his fellow-citizens. 

I have to apologize, Mr. President, to the distinguished individual, the 
subject of these imperfect remarks, but to the company no apology will be \ 
thought necessary, for I am persuaded the sentiments I have ventured to 
express are those of all who hear me. As an American, proud of the well- 
earned fame of one of her favorite sons, and as a citizen of the state Avhich 
was so deeply interested in some of his latest negociations, I could not 
have said less, and as an old friend, excited by the recollection of many 
pleasant instances of social intercourse, I dared not trust myself to say more. 

I proceed to discharge the agreeable duty assigned to me by announ- 
cing the 11th toast. 

11. The Army— Our ancestors owed to its valour the establishment of their inde- 
pendence : the present generation is indebted to its patriotic exertions for the preser- 
vation of peace. 



131 

Major General Scott responded to this toast m the following terms : — 
Touched with the high compliment paid by this distinguished company 
to that arm of tne national defence to which I have the honour to belong, 
I offer yoUj gentlemen, the return of its grateful acknowledgments. If 

"In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man, 
As modest stillness and humility ; — 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
******* 

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect — 
******* 

Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 
To his full height"— 

the army fulfils all the conditions of good citizens and good soldiers. 
The school-master has been abroad in its ranks, and thanks to the 
West Point academy, our younger officers, when in the bosom of society, 
are best known by their modest bearing — their ready obedience to law, to 
the habits and feelings of their country. 

Under the other circumstance — that of active service, I need but to allude 
to the triumphs of what has partially been termed — the second. War of III" 
dependence. History has occupied herself with those deeds, and in one 
stream of eloquent praise, has mingled the glories of the navy and army. 

More recently, our twelve or fourteen regiments have not been idle, and 
if they have won but few bloody victories, they at least have marched m 
triumph through every forest, hammock, swamp, and prairie of the fron- 
tiers — 

" Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 
And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim." 

In the Black Hawk campaign, none of those difficulties, nor the dread 
cholera, long delayed the onward course, and the enemy, overcome by 
perseverance and valour, were in the end taught the high Christian lesson, 
of justice blended with mercy. 

At Charleston, Avhen the gallant but too sensitive Carolinians had, by 
evils imaginary or real, or both, been brought almost to disunion, the offi- 
cers and men of the navy and army on duty in that harbour, laboured by 
meekness and kind offices — in one instance, saving that beautiful city 
from general conflagration — to assuage the angry feelings which had been 
excited, and thus kept the way open for that masterly movement in Con- 
gress which restored the noble state to the eager embraces of her sisters 
of the Union. 

The Florida war ensued and continues. This has been a deep afflict 
tion to the country, and yet a greater one to the regiments employed — 
which, throughout, have displayed every effort of heroic perseverance and 
hardy endurance. It was my fortune to witness many of the difficulties 
and distresses of that war, during the twenty-three days in the field 
which were allowed me. We then only succeeded in removing about 
four hundred Seminoles, and suffered, for a time, the censures of the 
hasty. But as applause had never spoiled our gallant troops, so neither 
did condemnation change their noble character, and all remained^ t<? 
country and government — 

"As true as the dial to the sun, 
Although it be not snone upon." 

For the last six months a handful of tne army has been incessantly 
employed on the Canadian frontiers, in maintaining the supremacy of the 
laws and the national faith, pledged by treaty to a friendly power. Here 
again our officers and men have, without exception, done their duty. 
Wherever they have been able to appear, success has attended their ef- 
forts, and under Providence, but for those efibrts, the United States, in all 



132 

probability, would, ere this, have been at war with a great and kindred 
people. 

I will but briefly allude to one other service recently performed by our 
army — the removal, a distance of nine hundred miles, of the numerous 
and interesting tribe of Cherokee Indians. This service, in which the 
militia of North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama bore a mer- 
itorious part, was accomplished, not alone by collecting the persons of 
the Indians, but hy the conquest of the will, up to that time indomitable 
and adverse. The means w^ere persevering kindness, exerted by all, and 
extended to all. I offer this bloodless triumph, obtained by the clemency 
of the sword, as in some degree worthy of the example of the illustrious 
William Penn, and I am happy to add, from a personal knowledge of 
their late and present countries, that the emigrants have every prospect 
of being greatly and permanently benefited by the change. 

I beg leave, gentlemen, to offer this toast: 

The surviving Heroes and Worthies of the Revolution— They are dearer and dearer 
to the hearts of their countrymen, as their numbers diminish. 

12. The Navy — Created by the Federal Government : its past achievements are 
pledges that it will not be wanting in the hour of national danger. 

Commodore Claxton responded to this toast, but we are unable to re- 
port his remarks. 

13. Women — The best teachers and guardians of soimd principles. 

A toast having been offered complimentary to General Morgan Lewis, 
who was Marshal of the day at the inauguration on the 30th April, 1789, 
and was now present, after filling in the intermediate period important 
offices, among which was that of Governour of the state of New York. 

General Lewis made a handsome acknowledgment, and gave the fol- 
lowing sentiment : — 

Our Country — Her progressive prosperity from the epoch we this day celebrate, af- 
fords the best comment on her form of government and its general administration. 

By President Duer : 

Massachusetts — The nursing mother of the Hampdens and Sidneys of the heroic 
age of America : This day has proved that she had not lost her fecundity in the sec- 
ond generation. 

The Hon. Judge Davis, of Boston, responded in an animated manner, 
and concluded by offering the following sentiment : 

The spirit of American social polity — Onward, ever onward, more majorum, in 
the march of improvement, and advancement of human happiness. 

Mr Hone, alluding to the enthusiasm with which Washmgton was 
received in New Jersey, when on his journey from Mount Vernon to 
this city, to assume the office of President, and especially complimenting 
the patriotic matrons of that state, called up Governour Pennington, 
who spoke as follows: 

He said that he took the occasion, in behalf of the people of his State, 
not only to thank the gentleman for his complimentary remarks respect- 
ing New Jersey and the part she had taken in the great cause of achiev- 
ing the independence of the country, but to thank also this company for 
the hearty manner in which those sentiments had been received. Hav- 
ing been on the spot on which many of the most interesting and trying 
scenes took place, her citizens had been peculiarly exposed to the hard- 
ships and privations of the war. We boast, that it was upon our soil the 
tide of war was changed. After retreating through the state with his 
patriot band, borne down by every calamity, in the face of a numerous 
and well-appointed British soldiery, Washington, at Trenton, by a single 
battle, gave victory to our arms, recruited the spirits and courage of his 
troops, and revived the hopes of the country. It was no wonder, as had 
been alluded to in the course of the day by the venerable gentleman, 
£Mr. Adams,] that General Washington was deeply affected at the in- 



133 

scription on the triumphal arch erected to receive him when, on his way 
to take upon himself the office of first President of the United States : 
" The defender of the mothers will he the protector of their daughters." 
That was the very ground on which the faie of our mothers was decided. 
These mothers were indeed defended by Washington, but it should be 
said also that they defended themselves. Many are the instances of 
their devotion to the sacred cause. 

Governor P. here alluded to several instances of individual heroism 
and determination in that state, and closed with a firm persuasion that 
the same spirit which burned there in 1776, had been transmitted to their 
children, and would always promptly respond to the call of their com- 
mon country. Alluding to the recent difficulties which threatened to dis- 
turb the quiet of the nation, he said he spoke the common sentiment of 
the people in declaring that they desired peace with all the world, and 
that they felt under peculiar obligations to a gentleman now present, 
[General Scott,] for the vigorous and important services he had rendered 
his country on that occasion. After adverting to the pleasure all had de- 
rived from the review of the scenes of the revolution which they had 
heard that day, he oifered the following sentiment : — 

The Recollection of foririer times — Every day they become dearer to all true- 
hearted Americans. 

The Hon. Samuel L. Southard, of New .Tersey, being called upon, 
spoke at considerable length, with great eloquence and effect, and con- 
cluded by giving the following toast : 

The Judiciary of the United States — The honest offspring of the Constitution : she 
has nourished her mother with all a daughter's love, and more than a daughter's devotion. 

By Thomas Fessenden, Esq. : 

Connecticut as she now is : true to the principles, the feelings, and the blood of Con- 
necticut of the Revolution. 

By Hon. Thomas Day, of Hartford : 

The study of Jurisprudence as a subject and a source of history.' 

George Folsom, Esq., of this city, being called upon by the President, 
remarked that this was a proud day for the New York Historical Society, 
on which so many respected citizens from our sister states, had assembled 
to unite with us in the commemoration of this great anniversary. 

Among them he was glad to see an able representation from the most 
northern member of the Union, whose geographical position caused her to 
lead, like the star that adorned her escutcheon, in the constellation of 
states. Mr. F. then alluded to the recent border difficulties, and said that 
Maine had not only proved true to herself, but to the great principles of 
our government which had been so happily illustrated to-day. Maine had 
ever been jealous of her political rights, and her citizens never hesitated 
to assert and vindicate them at whatever hazard. At a very early period 
of he* nistory, the people of that remote colony manifested the same spirit 
of resistance to usurpation and aggression, that had of late animated as one 
man her entire population. He alluded to the attempts that were made by 
the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1652, to extend her jurisdiction over 
the inhabitants of Maine, which met an open and manly resistance from 
the civil authorities and the people of the province. 

But, said Mr. F., there is a gentleman present whose labours in explor- 
ing and illustrating her annals have given him a high character among 
the historical writers of our country, [Mr. Willis, of Portland,] who can 
better speak for his own state; and he would conclude by offering the fol- 
lowing sentiment : — 

The State of Maine — Ever prompt to resent the slightest infringement upon the 
honour of her government, and to vindicate the integrity of her territory, yet acknowl- 
edging with equal promptitude the sacred character of her obligations to the American 
Union. 



134 



^Villiam Willis, Esq., of Portland, a delegate from the Maine Histori- 
cal Society, rose to tender to the Society his sincere thanks for the com- 
plimentary manner in which they had just noticed the state to which he 
had the honour to belong. He was aware, he said, that Maine, at this 
particular period, did not stand in very good odour, from the excitement 
which recent events upon its border had produced; but he begged to 
assure the gentlemen present, that Maine was as unwilling to disturb the 
peace of the Union as any of her sister states ; that she had been forced 
into the position in which she stood, not from any desire of bringing her- 
self into notice, or setting herself up against the interest and welfare of 
the Union, but from a solemn sense of duty she owed to her own charac- 
ter and rights. She was not contending for a few acres of territory, but 
for a great principle. She was resisting an encroachment upon her soil 
and jurisdiction, and it mattered not whether it was for one acre or one 
million acres — she would not yield it upon compulsion, or for any threat 
of any power. 

He believed that the claim of Maine to the whole territory in dispute 
was as clearly established by argument as any case was ever done, and 
that if any man would impartially examine it, he would be satisfied as to 
the perfect demonstration of that sideof the question. No impartial jury, 
in a court of justice, would hesitate, on the same state of facts, to retuea 
a verdict in favour of Maine. 

He asked gentlemen of New York to consider what their feelings 
would be if a border nation should set up a claim to a portion of their 
frontier county of Niagara, or of Oswego, for the purpose of giving ad- 
ditional value to the foreign territory, by public improvements ; would 
they stop to consider the value of the land thus claimed — to go into tne 
valuation of dollars and cents on the subject? No, their public spirit 
would spurn such a consideration, and the Union would shake to its 
centre with their indignant rebuke. The claim to the disputed territory 
in Maine is no better founded than would be such a one as he supposed. 
He therefore invoked the patriotism and public spirit of the people of 
New York to sustain the great principle for which Maine was contend- 
ing, and not censure her, as if rashly wishing to disturb the peace of the 
country. 

Mr. W. then compared the situation of Maine now with that of fifty 
years ago ; having then no place in the Union as an independent state, but 
one member of Congress, as a district of Massachusetts, and a population 
of only 90,000. Now she has eight members in the lower house of Con- 
gress, a population of half a million, is next to New York in coasting 
tonnage, and the third in aggregate tonnage. 

He then adverted to some resemblances in the early history of New 
York and Maine. The same year, he observed, just two hundred and 
thirty years ago the present year, which beheld the adventurous Hudson 
sailing up this beautiful bay, in the little bark the Half Moon, under the 
Dutch flag, likewise witnessed the first attempt to colonize Maine, by a 
spirited company, who formed a settlement on the Kennebec river. 
Both attempts then failed, but were afterward renewed, with what 
success we all may see. When he considered what two hundred and 
thirty years had produced, and especially the very rapid progress of 
the last fifty years, his mind could set no limit to the future greatness 
of this country. The prophetic visions of the most sanguine would fail of 
the reality. Much, however, depended upon the preservation of the 
Union an^ the liberal institutions of our landj and in this connexion he 
wou^'d propose as a sentiment — 

The next Fifty Years' Jubilee of the New York Hisforisal Society — May it find 
ournational banher continuing to float over an undivided republic, and our motto 
stUl be, " One country, one constitution, one destiny." 



135 



By George Qibbs, Esq. : 

The State of Rhode Island— One of the last to adopt the constitution, she will be 
the last to desert its principles. 

John Rowland, Esq., President of the R. I. Historical Society, res- 
ponded in the following terms : 

The citizens of our several states are united by stronger bonds than 
those engrossed on parchment. The place of present residence, in many 
instances, may not describe the home of the individual ; yet, in a larger 
view, we cannot be said to be separate from our friends and connexions 
while we are within the limits of the union. 

The first instance in history in which Rhode Island and New York 
became connected, took place in 1665, when Thomas Willett was ap- 
pointed mayor of this city. He afterward returned to Rhode Island, 
where his monument now exists. 

To thousands of other ties of union, the Antiquarian and Historical 
Societies will necessarily add, in promoting the common object in which 
they are engaged, and which this day's celebration points to as the 
brightest page in American history. 

In connecting the past with the present, I offer this sentiment: 

The Memory of Thomas Willett, the first Mayor of New York. 

By Rev. Dr. Wainwright : 

History, which records, inspires also to noble deeds. 

Mr. Grenville Mellen, being called upon, recited the following ode, composed for the 
occasion. 

THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA. 

BY GRENVILLE MELLEN. 

I would not have ray land like thep, 

So lofty — yet so cold ! 
Be her's a lowlier majesty, 

In yet a nobler mould. 
Thy marbles— works of wonder ! 

In thy victorious flays, 
Whose white lips seemed to sunder 

Before the astonished gaze ! 
When statue glared on statue there, 

Tlie living on the dead, 
And were as silent pilgrims were 

Before some sainted head — 
O, not for faultless marbles yet 

Would I the light forego, 
That beams when other lights have sot, 

And art herself lies low ! 
I ask not for the chisel's boast— 

A Pantheon's cloud of glory 
Bathing in Heaven's noon-tide the host 

Of those who swell her story ! 
Though these proud works of magic han»!, 

Fame's rolling trump shall fill, 
The best of all those peerless bands 

Is pulseless marble still. 
And though no classic madness here 

With quick transforming eye, 
Bid beauty from the block appear 

Till love stand doubting by— 
I care not — for a brighter wreath 

Than round the Parian brows 
Of those whose sculpture seemed to breathe, 

Shall wait our holier vows. 
And ours a holier hope shall be 

Than consecrated bust, 
Some loftier mean of memory 

To snatch us from the dust. 
And ours a sterner art than this 

Shall fix our image here — 
The spirit's mould of loveliness 

A nobler Belvidere ! 
His spirit that in thunder spake 

In beautiful command 
To list'ning worlds, like sun shall break 

Undimmed on every land ! 



The light that time pours round a land 

A sacred light may be, 
But leads not to a great command 

Like that which crowns the Free ! 
And holy that unfaded light, 

Which Ungers with the dead ; 
But then the beams, how passing bright 

That fire the path we tread ! 
Then tell me not of years of old. 

Of ancient heart and clime ; 
Ours is the land and age of gold, 

And ours the hallowed time I 
The jewelled crown and sceptre 

Of Greece have passed away. 
And none of all who wept her 

Could bid her splendour stay. 
The world has shaken with the tread 

Of iron-sandaled crime — 
And fast, o'ershadowing all the dead, 

The conqueror stalked sublime . 
Then ask I not for crown and plume 

To nod above my land : 
The victor's footsteps point to doom- 
Graves open round his hand ! 
The memory of the monarch Man 

We gather now to sing. 
Who, when Columbia's years began 

Their liKht on time to fling, 
To Freedom's altar-place came up 

Before his land to bow, 
And lift to God her golden cup. 

With sacrifice and vow — 
Is not that meaner memory 

Which hngers with a crown ! 
'Tis the light that links man with the sky ; 

The light he lays not down ! 
Rome ! with thy pillared palaces 

And sculptured heroes, all 
Snatched in their warm triumphal days 

To Art's high festival- 
Rome ! with thy giant sons of power. 

Whose pathway was on thrones, 
Who built their kingdoms of aii hour 

On yet unburied bones — 



136 



Until the beam of sun and star 

Shall (lie on mount and cloud, 
And virtue's pillars sink afar 

'Mid the olden wrecks, and proud ! 
The spirit that ihis ocean shout 

Kails with its holy morn, 
Yet sweeps oar lumined path about— 

We bow to Washington ! 
Then let them bind with bloomless flowers 

The busts and urns of old; 
A fairer heritage be ours — 

A sacrifice less cold ! 



Give n on our to the Great and Good. 

And wreathe the living brow, 
Kincilini? with virtue's manthng fc.lood— 

And pay the tribute now ! 
So when the great and good go down, 

Their statues shall arise 
To crowd those temples of our own — 

Our fadeless memories ! 
Ana when the sculptured marble falls, 

And art goes in to die. 
Our forms shall live in holier halls — 

The Pantheon of the skv '. 



By Hickson W. Field, Esq. : 

Washington — Who never accepted office but for the welfare of his country, and 
never appointed an officer but from a belief in his worth. 

By Chairman of the Comnnittee of Arrangements : 

The two Adamses — The former the champion of national independence ; the latter 
of civil and intellectual freedom. 

By John Jay, Esq. : 

T/;e Philanthropists of the Age — Who, true to the spirit of their fathers, inculcate, 
not as an abstract trueism, but as a rule of duty, the principles of universal liberty ; 
and who, while they battle for the rights of others, will manfully maintain their own. 

By William L. Stone, Esq. : 

The great principle engraven by the Regicides upon the rock that sheltered them 
at New Haven — " Opposition to Tybants is Obkdjence to God." 

By George B. Rape) ye, Esq. : 

The Memory of John Lawrence — The representative of this city in the first Con- 
gress under the present Constitution. 

By Jotham Smith, Esq. : 

John Jay — In the history of no nation, ancient or modern, can we find a more per- 
fect model of a patriot, a statesman, and a man. 

By Dr. John W. Francis : 

The Stars of our Confederacy — Time has only added to their number and their 
brilliancy. 

By Samuel Ward, Jr. Esq. : 

The State of New Yor^— Ever faithful to the Union. 

By David Colden, Esq. : 

The memory of Philip Schuyler, the soldier and the patriot. 

By Dr. Henry M. Francis : 

The Constitution of the United States, in the full tide of successful experiment. 

The following ode was composed after listening to the Oration, and produced at the 
table, by William Cutter, Esq. 

ODE.- By William Cutteb. 
"The ark of our covenant is the Declaration of Independence— our Mount EbaJ, the Articles 
of Confederation— our Gerizim, the Constitution."— Mr. Adams. 
Priests of this holy land. 
Bear on the hallowed ark — 
Blest symbol of the God at hand, 
Our guide through deserts dark. 
There, by God's finger graven, 
Is our eternal creed, 
Drawn from the liturgy of heaven 
In Freedom's hour of need. 
Escaped from that dread curse, 

That lowered o'er Ebai's brow 
Threatening with stern and dark reverse 
The shrine at which we bow — 



Oh ! shun with pious awe 

Corruption's least approach, 
Nor on tnat sacred fount of law. 

Let aught profane encroach. 
Round Gerizim's fair hill. 

Where first our Union rose, 
In peace and glory clustered still. 

Our growing tribes repose. 
There may our children rest, 

Till Time himself shall die ; 
Still with that heavenly presence blest — 

Our Ark of Liberty, 

In the course of the evening a fine transparency, representing old Federal Hall, for- 
merly standing on the corner of Wall and Nassau streets, the scene of Washington's 
inauguration, was disclosed by the withdrawal of a curtain at the upper end of the 
hall, and produced a brilliant eflfect. The figures of Washington and Chancellor Liv- 
ington, were seen in the balcony, the one laying his hand upon the book, while the 
other administered the oath of office, in the presence of a vast concourse of people. 
The painting was extremely well executed, and taking the company by surprise, drew 
forth long and loud applause. The hall was also decorated with copies of Stuart's 

Eortraits of the first five Presidents of the United States— copies painted by Stuart 
imself The festivities were continued to a late hour, and brought to a brilliant close 
the commemoration of a day long to be remembered in the annals of our country's 
happiness and prosperity. 



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